


i'll be here in the morning

by nocountryy



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medic!Reader, Mutual Pining, Reader-Insert, Slow Burn, Smut, The Love Is Requited They're Just Idiots, Touch-Starved, Violence, Yearning, so much yearning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 55,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28112574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocountryy/pseuds/nocountryy
Summary: "where were you when i was still kind?"-g.a. isakov, "master & a hound"The Mandalorian crashes on an unknown planet. Severely injured, he follows the sound of singing until he, literally, lands in your lap. A trained medic, you begrudgingly decide to help the bounty hunter in order to continue evading a dark past.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Reader, Din Djarin/You, The Mandalorian/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 130
Kudos: 304





	1. a strange beauty

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: Violence, descriptions of gore, hurt/comfort, angst/fluff, masturbation (m), brief panic attack description, suggested sexual assault, canon divergent (post-season 1), slow burn

What he hears first is song.

It’s nearly night on the unfamiliar planet. At first he thinks the sound is some kind of bizarre hum of wind. He’s crash landed and between the hole in his chest and the blood in his eyes, he can barely stagger forward, let alone think things through, as he stumbles out of the smoldering Crest.

It stuns him, for a moment. On the verge of it all ending, the pain vibrating through his body, and he _literally_ falls into some kind of melody so haunting he can’t help but think he’s already in some cruel kind of afterlife. Underworld would be equally fitting, he deserves that more.

He tries to pull in a breath. The sound that leaves him could only be described as a gurgle. It’s followed by a cough. Something hot and metallic tasting comes up with it, coating the inside of his mouth and dribbling over his chin.

Maker, he’s screwed.

He hadn’t realized how much worse it was going to get until he was finally safe in the Crest. In a daze, he opened the med-kit only to find the last Bacta treatment in a shattered mess. In the fresher, he tried to stuff some remaining gauze into the gaping hole on his right pectoral. He really tried not to pass out. He wasn’t successful. He wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion or the knife wound, but every breath exited in a fluttering wheeze he was barely able to push through. It must have punctured a lung. _Fucker was able to get right up under the armor_.

Delirious with blood loss, he could barely register the one-handed climb into the cockpit and typing in whatever coordinates first come to mind before he blacked out again. It was in and out from there. He thought he entered Naboo, somewhere safe and familiar and not teaming with others who’d like to do much more and worse than he had already weathered, but a glance at the red-orange slicked control panel told him he was quickly approaching an uncharted planet. His hands were uncontrollably shaking, covered in his own blood and who knows who else’s. He had no idea if the Crest has the ability to dampen the landing but it was too late to start asking favors of some higher power now. 

“Sorry, kid.” It’s all Mando could think to say, voice barely registering over the modulator.

The child was fast asleep already. He had to mend Mando’s spine in order for Mando to drag himself back to the Crest once the smoke of the battlefield had settled. 

Mando’s entire body was still vibrating from the energy of it, probably the only thing keeping his heart beating. He was barely conscious long enough to slide the shields shut on the child’s cradle before impact.

It had been a long day.

He woke, miraculously still breathing—if the futile gasps trying to be made around a collapsed lung could be called something like that. He swung his heavy head around, blindly grasping the child’s cradle and pulling it behind him. The child was still asleep—unharmed save for a dent on the side of his crib that sputtered with an occasional spark. It took Mando a moment to register the alarms blaring, the flashing lights and acrid smell of scorched plastic and metal.

He doesn’t remember staggering out of the Crest. Just that now he is in a field of some sort, staggering forward with the kid’s cradle following close behind.

It is only then that he hears the song.

An idyllic hillside stretches before him, tall grass dotted with small, yellow wildflowers reach to meet a light fog. In the distance there’s the shadowed suggestion of mountains. If he didn’t know any better, he would really think this was Naboo. Mando can’t even begin to comprehend how his brain is able to process any of it. _Really? You’re about to take your last handful of breaths and you’re taking in the_ flowers _of all things?_ Though maybe he isn’t, if he is able to. His head begins to fill with a kind of static where nothing makes any sense.

He can hear, at least. Very well. Well enough to recognize that there is some kind of singing, some kind of song, reverberating through the sensors of his helmet loud enough to bring him back to reality.

A song isn’t necessarily the right word for it—there are no words, or, at least, no words Mando could distinguish. Sound, more like. Melodious sound. Long, whooping notes of crisp sound. A siren’s call. So he follows the singing.

Mando doesn’t know how long it takes to reach its origin—between his quickly blackening vision or the equally disorienting fog, it is hard to navigate the expanse of green before him, let alone determine the time it takes to see the slight silhouette in the distance. Once he does, it’s a stumbling, panting race to reach it before his legs give out. Mando falls once, then pushes himself up. He doesn’t have the ability to call out around the useless, deflated bag of tissue leaning against the right side of his ribcage, so he keeps pushing forward. And it’s like he’s running in a dream, the pace as which he lurches forward, trailing blood and gore behind him. And he’s trying to move but he keeps almost falling and the figure is getting closer but it isn’t moving and he’s half certain he’s hallucinated it all and this is it. It’s over. All this for almost nothing and what about the kid. What about this kid if it’s over and. It’s over and. And.

And it’s you. Standing there. A long dress lifting slightly with the breeze. Your back is to him, hair swept over and through itself in an intricate braid. When you turn, your face is already contorted in shock.

And still, you are the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

The Mandalorian falls to his knees, colliding with the ground before he can even process losing feeling in the lower half of his body.

**

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

In it, he is Din again. For the first time in a long time. He knows this in the way one just knows things, in dreams.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

He is kneeling before it, in defeat or prayer he does not know. It is one in the same, either way.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure.

It touches his face gently. When it does, he vomits ticks or leeches, depends on the day. They spill into his hands and he is left there. Staring at them. Writhing, they slip through the fingers of his cupped palms. He always wakes before they reach the ground.

**

On waking, the first thing he notices is that the grass is trying to reclaim the house.

He knows that he is in a house because of the soft mattress beneath him, pressing up and into his body as if in some kind of forgiveness. It’s a single room cabin, a dirt floor, a single bed, a kitchen to the far wall. Incredibly bright with three windows of varied size above the sink. As he opens his eyes, the first thing he sees are sparse but tall green stalks brushing the leg of a sturdy looking olbio-wood table, a messy collection of bloodied bandages, glass bottles, and bowls resting atop its surface. A flower dots the top of only one of the stalks, its petals no bigger than the nail of his thumb. He hears two soft voices, speaking from somewhere above him. Darkness clouds his vision as soon as he realizes he is awake.

When his eyes open again he is already in the process of sitting up, holding his shoulder with a grunt. He fully gains consciousness in the middle of the action, in time to barely recognize a cry of surprise as something clatters to the floor. He swings his head around, right hand automatically going to his holster despite the burning pain the motion conjures. Empty.

He turns sharply and it’s you. It’s you, again, looking all the more surprised at his sudden waking than you had when he was dragging his half-dead body towards you.

Your hands are pressed against your stomach, the wooden bowl of some sludge-like salve at your booted feet. Your eyes are wide, frozen as if he had a weapon to draw. The skin beneath them is puffy and discolored with exhaustion. Your dress is now smeared with what he can only assume is his own rust-brown blood. The dress presses tightly against your chest with your heavy breathing. Mando’s gaze catches there, for a moment, in spite of himself, before traveling again to your face. Wide eyes, plush lips slightly parted--your hair is in a loose bun that has barely managed to contain itself, escaped pieces gently framing your face. You’re one of the most beautiful creatures he has ever seen. His resolve hardens immediately because of it.

You press your lips together firmly in annoyance, almost in tandem with Mando clenching his own jaw. You stoop low to snatch the bowl and pestle from where they lay at your feet, irritation radiating off of you in waves.

“You’re taking my bed, Mandalorian.” Your voice is steady for the most part, but falters slightly with his name. It betrays the fear in your eyes, nearly masked by the tightness in your tone. Regardless, you persist. Straitening with the bowl pressed between your hip and forearm, you gesture with your free hand towards where he is still reaching for a non-existent weapon. “It is unbecoming to start our acquaintance with threats.”

“I was here with a… a companion,” his voice sounds absolutely ragged over the vocoder. Mando whips his head back around to scan the room, heart pounding. His shoulder feels like it is on fire. He begins to struggle to his feet. He fails.

“The little one is fine, resting.” You blow an offending strand of hair off your forehead with a frustrated, upward huff. “You’ve been out for days. We’ve been up every night trying to keep you breathing. Frankly, I could care less if you choked on your own tongue.” Your voice gets less biting when you’re facing him directly, as if the courage for your snark is dependent on not being able to see him. You continue, “Am’ile, however, is an old friend of an acquaintance of yours. You’d care to show her a little more respect.”

With another huff, you’re turning away and pushing through the piece of fabric that functions as a door. He watches you as you reappear through the wide window stationed just above the kitchen sink. Mando sags against the bed’s simple headrest.

There are little pieces of stained glass that have been strung from the tops of the windows, dripping down like raindrops. He watches them for a moment, clattering into one another. Mando swallows, shaking his head. He tries to take a few deep breaths before attempting to stand once again. He isn’t successful.

“I wouldn’t test that one, Mandalorian.” This voice is much older, slightly raspy in a way that automatically demands a lowered head or a knee pressed into the earth. A long-fingered hand pushes past the fabric still swaying from your exit. An elderly Bardottan woman enters, regarding him a moment. The child coos in the arm she cradles him with, his hands reaching out towards Mando. The Bardottan smiles, wobbling over to the bed and laying the child at his side. “She doesn’t like it when kindness is taken for granted.”

She turns, pulling out a chair from the table and sitting down with a sigh. He can tell her age by the halting way she walks, one four-fingered hand resting against her lower back, her leathered yellow-green skin’s pale stripes dulled by time. “Am’ile Dovalien of Naboo. I am an old friend of Caraynthia Dune, from her Republic days,” she takes her time with her words, and then even more to regard him. “You’re looking rough for wear, Mandalorian. I’d ease up on that shoulder before you put all the girl’s work to waste.”

 _An old friend of Cara’s._ He doesn’t know why it’s surprising by any means. Cara’s discussed her time before the war enough, and it is not like she is… inhibited, he guesses, is the right word…by the Way. So of course she would have “old friends.” Good friends. Maybe it’s surprising because he feels like there are similarities between the two of them that he has not shared with anyone else, odd to think she is able to having something that he does not.

“Who is she? The girl?” The words leave his mouth abruptly, before he can think them through. They hang there for a moment before Am’ile answers.

The Bardottan says your full name, he’s noticed she has a habit of doing so. Between that and her syrupy accent, it lends anyone she mentions in the conversation a kind of regal stature that he can’t help but admire. “She is my student. I hope she didn’t… frighten you too much. It’s rare we get visitors from outside the local village. You’re the first of her kind she’s encountered in almost six years now.”

The child chirps, clambering onto Mando’s chest. The pain is sharp and immediate. The man makes a sound he can’t control, using his good arm to pull the kid off and tuck him into his side. “Thank you, for all of this.” He’s ashamed he didn’t manage to get it out sooner, his lips pressed together firmly under the beskar. “I… I had to retreat before I could complete the job. I don’t have many credits on me but—"

“Do not, Mandalorian,” Am’ile shakes her head. “I would be insulted if you do.” She stands with a struggle, using the edge of the table to help herself up and waddling to his bedside, extending both boney arms for the child. Mando does what he can to help prop him back into the crook of Am’ile’s elbow. “Keep resting, if today’s treatments take well, you can start repairing your ship by tomorrow morning. The locals are a secluded people, they do not like strangers staying for very long.”

“Thank you,” he says. She hums something low in her throat in affirmation, flicking her hand in Mando’s direction with her back already turned. The fabric of the door only stills after a few minutes of swaying.

**

After your first—well, technically second—encounter, you don’t really make conversation when you come in to check on Mando’s healing and clean up the medical station Am’ile and you had established on the kitchen table. It’s all matter-of-fact, from the tilt of your shoulders to the set of your jaw. When you do directly address him, he notices that you stare at the space just above his helmet, never into the t-shaped visor. Never right at him.

He deserves it, he supposes. Never one for talking unless necessary, he’s fine with the complete silence interspersed with: “Okay breathe in, breathe out,” as you check if his stitches can hold, or “try and stand up, walk around the table” hovering a few inches away in case he falls. It seems like Am’ile is the one who takes over the more internal matters, coming in to check on his lung capacity, if his ribs were healing in the proper place.

Apparently the child had to mend the worst of it, now all that was left over was a grinding, bone-deep soreness that comes with being put together from the inside out, as well as some particularly nasty scrapes, the surface remnants of the near-fatal stab wounds. The child had tried to heal those, too, later that morning, but Mando pushed his tiny hand aside, just as he had done the first time.

“No need to waste your energy, womp rat. Save that up for someone else,” he pats the kid’s head as he say this, placing him on the ground with a wince to toddle around the room in search of trouble.

You have your back to the both of them, washing a bowl once filled with Mando’s dirty bandages. You pause as he says this, head tilted slightly over your left shoulder as if contemplating turning around. After a beat, you seem to reevaluate and continue washing the blood out of the bowl, scrubbing at it with a brush heavy with soap. You’re wearing a different dress now, looser, cinched at the waist with a green-brown apron. You dry the bowl with the corner of your apron and start on the next object, a gleaming pair of surgical scissors.

It seems as if you’ve just come from a bath, hair wet and tucked behind your ears as you work. When you first entered, he thinks he heard you mention something about it, now that his condition had stabled. It was mumbled so quietly he almost believes he’s imagined it.

He wants to ask you where the glass hanging from the window is from, how you managed to string it up so perfectly that when the suns get to a certain place, as they were in that moment, it sent a kaleidoscope of colors onto the floor. A kaleidoscope of colors that dapple your face in such a beautiful pattern he half expects he’s in the middle of some torturous spice-dream.

When you turn to leave again, Mando turns his head to stare forward, feigning sleep.

**

When Am’ile confirms that the treatments have taken well, pointing out all the signs to you as you stand back with your arms crossed and nod intermittently, a diligent student. A part of him is okay with being a living anatomy model as long as it means you actually looking at him.

Once given the clear, he spends the next two days working on the Crest. It was, thankfully, in much better shape than he thought. A bit difficult to go about making the repairs the first day with one of his arms in a sling, but breathing is easier and the deep pain has been replaced with a dull ache that is less difficult to push aside for the time being.

You bring him meals and check his stitches at the crash site—you seem to continuously clarify that you’re only doing this because Am’ile’s hips cannot take the inclines of the hills anymore. Every time you hike up the grassy slope towards him you seem to get a little bit braver, looking him evenly in the eyes for short periods each time.

He’s grateful to see you each time. It’s been a long time since he’s eaten anything that wasn’t from a cantina or a freeze-dried bar. Even though he eats quickly, pushing his helm just below the tip of his nose to do so, he savors it all the same. You turn your back to him as he eats for privacy, playing with the child.

His third morning working on the ship, he gets up at dawn. He’s restless and wants to finish the build as soon as possible, get out of here before Greef Karga starts getting antsy with his absence. A very small, very weak part of himself also knows the longer he stays, the more he becomes a threat to a place like this. It’s too warm. Too gentle. He doesn’t belong here. Something about his presence is disruptive. He just knows this.

Mando still can’t bear the weight of the beskar against his bad shoulder. He pulls on the button-down tunic Am’ile had asked him to wear in order to get better access to his stitches with a wince. It’s a dark green kind of fabric, loose enough to fit both him and the bulk of his bandages comfortably. He’s still a bit light headed on his way to the Crest, but once settled beneath the hull he’s fine.

You come up with breakfast at around the same time as the previous day, setting it on the ground a few feet away from him as if he were some kind of cornered animal you were trying to lull into some sense of false security.

The child babbles something unintelligible from your arms as you turn your back and sit down in the grass. The child had been spending nights with you and Am’ile in the neighboring cabin, since Mando had taken the cabin you’d been sleeping in previously. Am’ile told Mando it was so he could get the rest he needs, without having to worry about the little one. One glance at the way you act around the kid makes it plainly clear that you’re absolutely smitten. It’s hard not to be.

Mando eats quickly, lowering his helmet and turning to give you the clear. You don’t respond, too consumed with attempting to thwart the child’s attempts to catch a hopping bug the size of your palm. You’re wearing a tank top and long, brown cargo pants, seated with your legs crossed and leaning forward every so often to plop the kid back into your lap every time he toddles too far.

There’s a moment where he allows his eyes to trace the elegant curve of your shoulders. Something in his throat tightens. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he pushes himself to his feet and resumes the task at hand. Leaning down to pick up a replacement panel, he straightens with a grunt.

“ _What_ are you doing?” Your voice surprises him enough to drop the paneling. It barely misses his booted foot. Small hands wrap around both his biceps, pulling him back. “Stars, stop that you’re gonna—”

And suddenly you’re in front of him, a whole head shorter yet already fussing over him like some family pet. You keep talking to yourself as you do so, maneuvering him to sit with his back leaning against the Crest, kneeling beside him as you pop the buttons of his shirt open. It’s like you started in a moment of complete vindication, and how have to keep up the act despite a deflating confidence. “I feel like the best bounty hunter in the galaxy could maybe use some _common sense_ after getting fresh stitches, just a thought but you obviously could care less…”

You keep talking, he knows that because he sees your mouth moving, but after that last word your hands are against his chest, unwrapping the bandages to check the punctured skin underneath. Your bare hands, on his bare chest. Any possible thought he could have formed after the fact left his head instantly.

He couldn’t even remember the last time someone had touched him, especially like this. Before, when you and Am’ile started patching him up, he was out cold. When you checked on his healing wounds the day before, you had politely asked him to remove his shirt and bandages with an undeniable warble in your voice, standing with your hands clasped behind your back and only glancing at his chest before instructing him to refresh his gauze.

They are soft and a bit colder than he’d expected. So soft. One hand is wrapped around his right trapezius, thumb resting in the dip of his collarbone, and the other cupping his left ribs as if he was trying to get away somehow. Something in him instantly stills. You keep your hands like that as you observe the wound. You give another huff,

“Don’t move.” You turn away, scooping up the kid and walking back down the hill.

He’s not sure if it’s in obedience to you or pure shock, but by the time you return, mumbling something about Am’ile taking over babysitting, he hasn’t moved a muscle. You dab on another layer of ointment, rewrapping his bandages. Satisfied with your work, you sniff, placing your hands on your hips to look back up at him. “What do you need lifted?”

Mando blinks, pausing long enough that you narrow your eyes, chin raised. “Well?”

After a beat, he gestures to the panel he dropped earlier. You both work together, in complete silence, for the rest of the day. 

When both suns sit low and heavy in the horizon, you raise your hand to your to your forehead and squint at the place where they are held by the two ragged lines of distant mountains. “It’s a strange kind of beauty, isn’t it.”

He looks at you, looking at the suns. When he doesn’t say anything, you wipe at the sweat and grease smeared across your forehead with the back of your forearm. Wordlessly, you brush your hands off on your pants twice before turning back down the hill.

Mando continues soldering wires. He only pauses an hour or so later, when he hears the song again. He puts down his tools and sits in the grass with his back to the Crest, staring out and into the mountain range before him, the two rocky faces cupping two entangled suns, one indistinguishable from the other. The song is as sweeping and ethereal as when he first heard it, heard you. He takes off his gloves, closes his eyes, and runs his fingers through the grass. He curls them into fists.

**

Later that night, he has to stumble out of the house and into one of the fields in order to keep the thoughts silent. He has the dream again, it is always impossible to keep sleeping after. He’d been up for hours at that point, trying to breathe through bursts of absolute, vision-blurring panic.

Usually he rests in hour-long bursts, whenever the time allows. He’s gone days without it, to the point that it’s more comfortable to refuse it than give in. It always gets worse when he allows himself to sleep at night. Whatever it is, it always gets worse.

But there’s nothing to fucking _do_ here but _think_.

It’s the bed. There’s something maddening about your mattress. He hadn’t been touched by another, skin to skin, in so long--the trails of fire your gentle hands left made something in his lower abdomen squirm, restlessly. Hopelessly. Without thinking, he lifts his cock from the waistband of his pants.

Nothing in him can keep the images out. The curve of your knuckles brushing his collarbone. His hand rises in a hard stroke. The low hum you gave once you pushed aside his tunic, unraveling the bandages. Eyes searching for damage. Another stroke, this one even more forceful than the last. The light from the glass against your skin, against the elegant curve of your throat. His thumb comes up to catch the head, already seeping with pre-come. Your gentle palm, dwarfed by the bicep it was pressed against yet steady and determined all the same. He’s so hard it’s excruciating and—

That first morning. The way your chest pressed and swelled against the tight fabric of your bodice, your breasts nearly pushing themselves up and over the gentle ivory neckline with each inhale. 

“F-fuck. Fucking sick,” he chokes out in horror as he finishes, his cock pulsing in his hand, his releases onto the damp ground before him. Shame settles itself in place of the writhing desire in his stomach. It is a much deeper feeling, he realizes, as he lowers himself with barely enough energy to tuck himself back into his pants, wiping his hand on the grass already wet with dew.

 _The girl is just trying to piece you back together and this is all you can think?_ But he really can’t remember the last time he was touched. With such kindness. Your hands were the softest thing to grace his body for as long as he could possibly remember. He already knows that this, whatever it is, will be devastating. Absolutely devastating. For this reason, something in him will cling to it for as long as he can.

The cold ground welcomes him, it’s the only measure he is given to realize his skin has quickly grown feverish. He almost falls asleep, right there on the ground. But there’s a gentle cry, from the neighboring house, just across the field from his—er, your—cabin. A gentle cry that quickly turns into an all too familiar hiccuping wail. From where he is curled on the ground, he can see right through one of the house’s windows as a lantern flicks on.

It’s just your silhouette, backlit by a warm orange light. You pace in small circles, bouncing the child on your hip, occasionally leaning your head down in what he could only think is to whisper something, just for you and the child. To press a kiss to the dip of his wrinkled forehead. He calms quickly afterwards, but you keep walking anyway. It’s a strange beauty, being able to watch your two forms, the way they bend and lean into the other, rendered indistinguishable by the lantern’s low light. Mando stays there for a long time.

**

“What is that sound?”

It’s almost nightfall again, the next day. Both Am’ile and Mando are seated at the table in your cabin. The Bardottan woman is playing a card game across from him that he’s been silently observing as they wait for one of his final treatments to sink back in. No bacta, here. Am’ile informed him on his first day. Too isolated of a planet. Her remedies are equally good if not better treatment, just needing some patience.

The singing has started again. It’s the only hint of your presence he’s gotten since the morning, when you unceremoniously plopped a plate of food at the food of his bed and told him you had informed everyone to steer clear of the cabin so he could take his time eating without “that thing on your head.” It was the best meal he’d had in a long while, sugared bread with a fruit jam and a piece of meat that tasted like some kind of mutton.

You start singing right as the healing muscles in his right shoulder have started to go warm and tingly with the salve Am’ile applied. When she doesn’t remove her gaze from her cards, he asks her again.

“What is that sound?”

Am’ile glances up, regarding him for a moment. She says your name, softly, turning her horse-like head towards the window to stare out into the gently moving grass, the empty orange of sunset turning the cut faces of the mountains a dull purple. “It’s a traditional song, from her home planet. It’s how they would call in the seasons, pray for the weather they needed to survive—the people here ask her to sing at nightfall. They say she summons a calm night. When she first arrived it… took some negotiating to allow her to stay.” Am’ile has the gentle, warbling voice of an old grandmother. There is another note from outside, long and slow and beautiful, ending in a sharp, high whoop that reverberates against the sides of the hills. “We look after their children when they go for hunts, it’s how we pay for our place here. This planet has been untouched for centuries, but the beasts are fierce. Would put any Endorian boar-wolf to shame.”

“And why is she here, with you?”

Am’ile is quiet for a moment. Her gaze remains fixed out the window. “She is escaping from a new kind of debt, Mandalorian.” The phrasing hangs in the air, static with its own weight. “The, ah… ex-Imperial officials who turned into warlords after the Civil War...” She looks like she does not want to continue any further. Mando waits in silence. She caves, they always tend to.

“The girl was a nursemaid, by label. They have drugs now, that tell your body you are with child. Lactation, pain of the body so deep it keeps you complacent. It’s a fetish for them, functional for their wives with babies they want nothing to do with. Miserable existence. Caraynthia Dune and I did much work trying to free as many girls as possible years ago, when she was still a soldier. I’d given up the fight, started this farm—began working as a healer for the locals, a peaceful people. The girl found me herself. I still have no idea how. She’s a fighter. Stronger than most any I’ve come across.”

Am’ile’s eyes grow sharp in a way Mando never expected they could. He’s taken aback momentarily, she can’t see his hands flex from under the table. “I have trained her to the best of my abilities, she’d be accepted as a distinguished medic at any Republic facility without a bat of the eye.” She doesn’t have to see Mando’s face to know that he’s in the process of rolling his eyes. “The girl is in danger staying here—they don’t care about what they’d consider to be former cattle as long as they don’t mock the warlords by staying sedentary. She may not be an engineer, but she’s professional--one of the best medics I’ve trained. Kindest, too. You’ll need someone to look after that lung,” Am’ile leans forward, resting a boney elbow against the table and extending a long forefinger to circle the space in front of Mando’s chest. She continues, “Amazing with children. Can hold her own well enough in a fight. Please don’t ever tell her I’ve told you this, but she has asked me to ah… propose this to you. Since the first night of your arrival she has asked to help on board. I know you’ve been looking for a… a… caretaker. The girl is it, Mandalorian. I know you’re an honorable man. I know you would treat her fairly, with kindness. It’s what she deserves. She’s all you could possibly ask for.”

The words hang in the air for a long time. Mando leans both forearms against the table, looking down at his loosely clasped hands. He takes five breaths, then looks back up at Am’ile. “One of the best medics you’ve trained?”

“The best,” Am’ile smiles to herself. It appears as if she already knows his answer. “Without hesitation, the best.”

“With that bedside manner?”

There is a beat of complete silence. Then Bardottan woman bursts into gleeful laughter, nodding her head as she does. The joy of it is enough to fill the entire room.

Mando looks down at his hands and allows himself a small, private smile. It was the closest thing to: _yes_. _Absolutely, yes,_ that he’s brave enough to voice.

**

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. In it, he is Din, again. For the first time in a long time.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. He is kneeling in prayer.

He can’t stop having dreams about a skinless figure. She touches his face gently. He reaches out to her.


	2. gentle things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: mutual pining, masturbation (f), alcohol, descriptions of gore
> 
> a/n: the gay agenda is finding a way to slip a dolly parton song into a star wars fanfic, i rest my case.

Most mornings you wake to the child’s soft cooing. Occasionally, the sound is met with a low, modulated voice, that murmurs incoherent phrases in response. It somehow puts your heart to rest before you even remember where you are. 

It’s strange, you’ve been a resident of the Crest for a handful of months now and it sometimes still takes you a few moments each morning to reorient yourself. You blame it on the strange limbo of hyperspace—it always throws you off for at least a day or two, and you swear your dreams are more vivid after. Sometimes you wake up panting for no reason at all.

You’re adjusting pretty well. A bit strange having a roommate/boss who doesn’t acknowledge your presence beyond the occasional but respectful nod. But it’s way better than you could have possibly imagined when you first started turning the idea over in your head. Granted, that was when you were about elbow-deep in his chest cavity, trying to fish out pieces of the shoddily constructed weapon that broke off inside him. You needed the first way out that presented itself to you, something you and Am’ile both agreed with, and well, when opportunity strikes or whatever.

Your first evening on the Crest, you asked the Mandalorian where you should sleep and he just shrugged, handing you a single, scratchy blanket with a “this is all I have.” Later, when you pass his bunk as he’s taking a nap, he’s curled in on himself on a bare cot and you realize that threadbare piece of fabric was _literally_ all he had. You don’t bring it up, but something in your chest softens towards him after that. There’s a new quilt folded neatly on his bunk by the time he returns from his first mission.

Your second day onboard, you found a metal table in a junk heap and pushed it against one of the walls in the engineering bay. You spent the better part of an afternoon figuring out how to weld it to the floor. The medical supplies went on top, then you pushed your pillow and your rolled-up mattress underneath. Sure, there was technically a second cot in the Crew’s quarters, but you wanted to give the Mandalorian his privacy whenever possible. Besides, as long as there wasn’t too much turbulence, your set-up was pretty great.

After a few missions, you’ve visited enough markets to buy an ample supply of blankets, sweaters, and pillows to keep you comfortable on the floor of the ship. It’s _freezing_ most nights, especially in hyperspace, and cocooning yourself in as many warm things as you could manage helps stave off both the chill as well as the occasional home sickness. The collection you’ve amassed thus far is in a various mis-match of pale jewel tones that remind you of Am’ile’s house. You didn’t realize that until you’d piled them all together on your bed and you couldn’t help but laugh at yourself a bit.

The child loves your soft things, happily snuggling up with you for naps while waiting for the Mandalorian’s return—though you suspect he’s just grateful for the new company. A consistent presence while dad’s away. You’re happy to give that to him.

The new routine is comfortable, the company is nice, the work is relatively easy. And, stars, the things you get to _see_. It’s honestly more than you could have ever asked for.

When your eyes blink open it’s already around eight in the morning. You’ve landed on Nevarro where the Mandalorian has already been gone for a day, attending some kind of “extended business meeting,” as he put it. Yawning, you eventually roll out of bed and stumble into the fresher, blearily rubbing the sleep out of your eyes with the spray’s cold water. Stepping out, you wrap your towel around yourself. In the tiny metal mirror suspended over the sink you pat on some lotion onto your face, eyes still heavy.

Reaching for your toothbrush, your knuckle grazes one of the Mandalorian’s facial razors. You wince, flicking your hand before examining it. A tiny nick. Sucking on it for a second to stop the blood flow, you glance at the Mandalorian’s side of the cabinet.

It’s strange to see the most banal traces evidence of what he is, _who_ he is, behind the all that beskar. Like the facial razors—to think he’s in here, maskless, shaving his face, while you’re playing with his kid or whatever just a few steps away. To think he takes a shower every day—er, well, you’re not sure about that one, but at least when he’s on the Crest—stepping out and wrapping a towel around his waist in order goes about his little tasks.

You swallow, removing your hand from your mouth and grabbing your toothbrush before your mind can wander anywhere else. You brush your teeth particularly well that morning.

The day is pretty typical from there. After feeding both yourself and the child breakfast, you settle on the floor of the hull with the small metal ball he’s obsessed with. You place him a few feet in front of you, he sways slightly on both feet before plopping down to mirror you, hands stretched forward in an demand to be put in your lap.

“Let’s do some of the exercises, yeah?” You know you’re essentially just talking to yourself as you hold the ball in the air, but you might as well make the effort anyway. Am’ile was no stranger to kids like him, or at least that’s how she put it—something about her people and some other group, the specifics completely slipped your mind. She didn’t really elaborate and you knew not to press.

Even though you don’t know much, you do try to mimic Am’ile’s drills-disguised-as-play at least a few times a day. He only seemed to do what you asked during those sessions when you weren’t looking, distracted by cleaning or studying whatever book you’d picked up hours later. You would always find the little ball in strange places, definitely not where you’d last placed it, and certainly out of the child’s reach.

At least it was good to know he was partially _pretending_ to not listen to you. You could work with partially.

The kid has been fussy since waking, refusing to focus on any of the things you were trying to prompt him to do. Yesterday, you spent a bit too much time at the markets with him—growing sick of protein bars, you initially set out trying to find something closer to tasting like home. Really, you just liked getting out of the Crest so you could see all those _people_.

You’ve amassed a collection of language dictionaries, trying to do some fast learning and even faster practicing to get your way around. Sometimes the vendors are kind and help you stutter your way through disjointed sentences in their native tongue, others just huff and immediately switch to Basic as soon as you start talking. You don’t mind either way.

The marketplace as a whole is new and exciting, the clatter and clamor of movement, laughing and snarling, voices raised in argument and lowered in the smallest exchange of intimacy. So far removed from the quiet slopes of Am’ile’s home and—

You don’t let the rest of that thought happen, quickly scooping the kid up and wrapping him to your chest with a long swath of fabric.

“I’m goin’ a little crazy in here too, little guy,” you mumble, pulling your satchel over your shoulder. “Your dad should be back in a while—let’s try to find a contact for supplies until then, yeah? Shouldn’t be too hard.” A total lie, it was way more difficult to find what you are looking for than you initially thought. You were particularly looking for a cauterizing instrument that was a bit more sturdy than the glorified cigar lighter the Mandalorian was currently using. Besides basic med-kit stock, it was nearly impossible to find anything more advance under the radar.

Yesterday was half-heartedly spent searching the markets in search of someone who might be tapped into Republic supply runs, which rendered you, predictably, empty-handed. Now you were on to your second best option, asking around the closest cantina where you could find the instruments you were looking for for without raising too much attention.

Okay, so maybe the Mandalorian specifically told you to keep out of the bars when you’re traveling without him. But you managed just fine on your own yesterday in an arguably more crowded environment. You’ve also dealt with… far worse than that hunk of metal could ever possibly imagine. You’re more than capable on your own. Still, you make sure to strap a dagger and a blaster to your belt before heading out.

You make quick work hurrying to the cantina, making sure to cover your head with the hood of your tunic and conceal the little one as much as possible. Basic survival instincts usually warrant drawing as little attention to yourself as possible, being a young human woman traveling alongside a small green wizard creature is pretty much the opposite of that.

He, predictably, doesn’t take very well to the concealed swaddle you’ve confined him to, and the two of you are in a constant back-and-forth of you attempting to wrap him up and him making quick work of wriggling out of any cover tactic you try. If it weren’t for those damn ears your life would be so much easier.

The bar has the quiet hum of activity, occasionally interspersed with a loud chatter of conversations rising to some kind of boiling point. You maneuver yourself to the counter and try to get the attention of the bartender, holding the kid to your chest until he squirms his way upwards and settles with his chin on your shoulder, one of his ears slipping out of the head covering you’d fashioned and thwapping you in the neck. You’ll deal with that in a second.

You’ve only just caught the bartender’s attention when the doors slam open. The clamor of the cantina quiets momentarily, and you see everyone shift slightly to eye whoever just entered. The two new patrons seem to be in the middle of an argument, voices low in secrecy but tense with frustration.

“I’d know that green mug anywhere.” With that you finally turn, heart dropping with anxiety. It’s the Mandalorian and a companion, a human man. The man’s voice, a deep bellow, is warm and inviting in a way that shouldn’t make you freeze completely as he addresses the kid. He then looks you up and down, pausing as the Mandalorian continues stomping forwards. You freeze anyway. “Ah—this is that girl you mentioned? Your caretaker?”

“She’s a medic,” the Mandalorian sharply corrects the man without moving to look at you. He quickly returns back to whatever conversation was initially at hand as the man continues his brisk stride towards a table at the back. There are three people already seated there, but by the time the Mandalorian arrives they have all left in a scuffling hurry. Neither of the men acknowledge it, just immediately slide into opposing sides of the booth. “Karga, this is ridiculous--I’m not a Republic spy, why would there be this many hoops on a bounty you’re just _handing out_?”

“I’m not just ‘handing it out,’ Mando, I’m giving it to you because I know you’re the most capable,” the man, Karga, addresses the Mandalorian then directs his attention towards you. “Come here, girl. Let me get a good look at you, I’m curious.” Turning to the bartender, he barks out an order for spotchka. You walk towards the table. There’s too much attention on the three of you to resist, you wouldn’t want to make things more complicated for the Mandalorian anyway. The bounty hunter’s voice almost immediately overrides his, low but gritty with anger as you slide into the booth beside him.

“I can’t—Karga you know I’ve never done something like this. This high-profile. Going deep-cover for a job isn’t something I can _do_.”

You feel Karga’s eyes on you, it’s brief but piercing. You busy yourself by looking up at the woman who serves you a small glass of the bright blue liquid, quietly thanking her.

“It’s all the fobs or nothing. The signal will be broadcast in a few hours’ time—they won’t expect something like this to be conducted semi-publicly. Keep monitoring the broadcast, but save that fob for last,” Karga places three fobs in the center of the table, then slides a forth a few inches removed from the rest. He can tell the Mandalorian isn’t convinced—stars, even _you_ can tell he isn’t convinced. Karga heaves a sigh and makes a stab at reassurance. “You can figure it out. You’re the only one I can trust to get this done. The most capable.”

The Mandalorian’s hand slams down on the table, you jump, quickly looking between the intense but even staring contest going on between Karga and the infuriated bounty hunter. Slowly, and with more than a bit of melodrama, the Mandalorian drags the fobs under his hand towards him, slipping it into his pocket without breaking eyes from Karga’s.

He turns heel so quickly his cape whips behind him. You scurry after him as fast as you can manage.

You can still feel the frustration steaming off of the Mandalorian the whole walk back to the Crest. You keep quiet, trailing behind him by a few steps—you _desperately_ want to ask what was wrong. Your mouth stays firmly shut.

Boarding the Crest, the Mandalorian immediately scales the ladder into the cockpit. After a few minutes you feel the Crest shutter into the air, quickly shooting into the empty sky and then hyperspace. You sigh and grab a book, turning the kettle on to make some caf and settling in your bed to an eye on the kid as he toddles around the expanse of the hull.

Hours later, when the child has exhausted all possible forms of entertainment, usually consisting of live wires and exposed paneling that you tug him away from, he begins to get fussy in a way that means he’s tired but refuses to sleep. It starts with the occasional whimper that _quickly_ crescendos into a full-blown fit. You know all the warning signs at this point.

The little terror had a bit of a habit of doing this—once the Mandalorian and you are in the ship he refuses to fall asleep unless you two are in the same room. A part of you knows this is a symptom of separation anxiety—which you in no way can blame him for, given the circumstances of their bond—but the cockpit is just about the last place you want to be.

It’s not that you’re scared of the Mandalorian, or anything. It would just be… incredibly awkward with the mood he’s in right now to attempt to lull his kid to sleep in his presence.

“Listen, buddy, your dad is super grumpy right now so—" The child just starts crying even louder, little fists balled up to pound futilely against your chest, trying to push you away. “Okay okay okay! I get it. I get it.” You sigh, biting your lip and looking down at the kid, then up at the ladder. The kid starts screaming. “Yeah, yeah. Alright.” You begin the climb up.

“Hey, sorry he’s being a little sensitive again,” you say as your head pops up onto the pilot’s deck, miraculously managing to pull yourself into the room with one arm holding the squirming kid against you. The floor seals shut behind you once you haul yourself over the edge.

The Mandalorian just grunts in response and continues flipping through radio channels, seemingly growing more frustrated with himself the longer it takes for him to find the frequency Karga directed him to. He’s in the pilot’s chair, back turned to you, shoulders hunched in concentration.

You settle into the copilot’s seat, resting the kid on his back on top of your legs. He settles almost instantly, big eyes no longer filled with tears.

Rolling your eyes with a small smile, you tickle him lightly until he starts giggling, then scoop him back up into your arms, allowing yourself to slide back in the chair a bit. You stare out into the bright darkness of space, blinking back at the stars as the child coos gently in your lap.

“A _coded_ civilian station, is he fucking crazy?” The Mandalorian mumbles to himself in his continued litany of abuses he’s slung Karga and the greater universe’s way since returning to the Crest.

The longer you’ve been here the more he’s started to do things like that, just talking into the air without the expectation of a response. You begin to think that that’s just the way he acts when it was just him and the kid. Though you’ve noticed that he has been cursing way more than he did when you first met. That might be a little bit your fault. Oops.

You look down at the child and rub one of his ears, leaning down to press a kiss at the crown of his head. His little three-fingered hand catches your hair and _pulls_. Wincing, you resist the urge to jerk your head back. Instead, you extend the pad of your index finger and lightly wiggle it against his button nose. He sneezes and lets go almost immediately. 

You let out a triumphant “ha!” then shake your head slightly and twist your face in a playful scowl. The kid resumes his giggling, batting at your hands when you try to tickle his tummy.

Glancing over at the angry hunk of beskar seated beside you, you notice he’s paused with his hand hovering over the radio’s controls, his head turned slightly towards his right shoulder to silently regard you and the child.

You quickly divert your gaze back down to the kid, resuming rubbing his ears as his eyes slowly, devastatingly slowly, ease shut. Only to snap open again with a playful babble, hands reaching up again for the free entertainment of the hair still attached to your head. _Shit_. You sigh. The Mandalorian goes back to flipping through the channels.

More static and garbled languages you’ve never encountered before. You try to ignore the pounding of your heart—that was probably the longest you’d ever seen him grant you any kind of attention—and keep trying to lull the child to sleep. As quietly as possible you try to stand, scooting around the copilot’s seat to gently bounce the kid in the limited space to the back of the cockpit. He’s quieted significantly, just enough that you could probably get him to sleep on your own, as long as you don’t jostle him too much on the descent back into the hull. You’re about to head down the ladder when—

The Mandalorian pauses momentarily on a channel that’s playing music. The opening swell of the first verse is unmistakable. Your chest fills with a certain warm feeling, pounding with memories you had long since tucked away.

“Wait,” you say it without thinking. Without even processing that the words left your mouth. “Wait, could you go back? That… that song…”

Wordlessly, he clicks back to the previous station. The cabin is filled with the music, a warm and bright voiced female vocalist smoothly intertwined with her male partner. The melody is plucky, something you could dance to—and have, more than once—and it’s overly saccharine in its pure, absolute joy in itself. But you suppose the cheesiness is part of the charm. You relish in it regardless.

 _You do something to me that I can’t explain_. There is a memory that surfaces just as quickly as it disappears. You couldn’t have been more than four. Your father, spinning you around by your pudgy forearm. It’s his laugh you remember most of all, something boisterous and full-bodied. You are dancing around the kitchen of a home you can’t remember, the floor dappled with light from the pieces of stained glass your mother had dangling from the windows. _Hold me closer and I feel no pain_. You smile to yourself, bowing your head down at the little one, quietly murmuring what lyrics you remember, rocking your hips in a gentle little dance. It works, the kid is fast asleep by the last chord.

The song ends, the disc jockey begins speaking in yet another language you don’t recognize. The Mandalorian quickly turns the volume down, lest it wake the child. He has reflexes fast enough to startle you, luckily your jolt does nothing to bother the baby in your arms. You gently place him in the pram, hovering beside the pilot’s seat. You slide the shield doors shut to keep out the noise and step back.

“Thank you, Mandalorian,” you say it softly, but you can see his helm bob slightly in a nod of acknowledgement. You take a deep breath and begin to head towards the ladder as he resumes flicking through the stations.

“Hey,” the Mandalorian says your name. You pause for a moment, then turn. He clears his throat—the sound comes out as a rough crackle over the modulator. If you didn’t know any better, you would think he sounds a bit nervous. “You can uh… you can just call me Mando, you know. The full thing is a bit of a mouthful.”

You blink once, then nod. Turning heel you, mercifully, scale back down the ladder with as much grace as could be mustered, despite your shaking hands.

That night, when you touch yourself, you shove the blanket he gave you against your nose and mouth. To keep quiet, you tell yourself. It smells like his soap.

**

Days after the radio incident, you can’t help but occasionally find that you’re singing the song to yourself as you go about your chores. It just seems to pop in your head as soon as you open your eyes, and it’s just _stuck_ there, but you’re not very mad about that.

Mando has landed on some bitterly cold planet that was made up of little more than ash and a thick red fog. He had left late last night/early this morning to start his hunt, telling you in a little scribbled note to expect him back in two days’ time. He has really bad handwriting, it’s strangely amusing.

You decide to deep clean the hull: washing the floors, doing laundry, organizing what meager new supplies you were able to gather from Nevarro. As you did, you sang to yourself. Out loud. Just for the pleasure of it.

Your mother taught you kulning, as was tradition for the young girls on your home planet. Your father taught you the low-bellied croon of the casino singers. When things were still good, you would sing for your parents friends at the parties they would throw and your father would play the piano. You wish you had more memories like that. It’s hard to recall anything through the foggy barriers of the past fifteen years, it makes something in your chest ache to even try.

Am’ile’s radio was for emergencies only, not wanting to draw unwanted attention with the signal. It has been ages since you’ve had access to one, ages since you’ve heard music that didn’t come from your own mouth. That was why you’d started the nightly calls at Am’ile’s because before that grassy little planet… well, speaking was barely an option. You’d seen too many girls hurt for things far less than murmuring a tune.

To sing in the way your mother taught you, with the whole of your body. To make yourself so boldly known. It was all you had ever wanted.

You start putting together dinner for you and the kid as the day winds down. Mando had a barely functioning hotplate that you were able to make the best of, having bought some fresh produce at the far more hospitable planet the three of you were stationed at the previous day.

The stew cooks while you finish up the rest of your work, slicing bread and setting up a little dining area for your and the kid because, frankly, why not go all-out? It’s good to treat yourself to the small, gentle things. Even when on an unforgiving rock hurtling through space. Especially then.

You hop in the fresher while you wait for the meat to get to the proper temperature, twisting your body to keep your hair out of the water’s blast. In the enclosed space, you feel a less self-conscious and allow yourself sing a little louder than the under-the-breath, partial-hum you’d managed throughout the rest of the day.

You don’t hear the hull opening between that and the fresher’s spray.

When you turn the water off, you recognize the sound of the last few mechanisms of the hull door stealing itself back in place. Anxiety settles in quickly as you dry off. _God, please let it just be Mando please_. There’s the sound of something heavy being thrown against a wall. You wince.

A low voice. “Pretty little bird you’ve got singing in here, just for me?” Then a wet _crack_. “ _Mother fuck—_ "

Your heart lurches in your chest as you quickly pull your clothes on, cracking open the fresher door to peer out into the hull. Mando is standing over the body of a target, now crumpled to the ground, holding a bleeding headwound with two long, thin hands. He nudges the bounty with the butt of the weapon he had presumably just used against the man’s skull. The man gives a choked moan, completely incapacitated.

“Do you…” your voice sounds far too small. You blink, inhaling and starting over. “Do you need to bring him in alive or do you need my—"

“The carbonite will stop the bleeding,” Mando’s voice is gruff. You nod, even though his back is turned to you, watching from the safety of the doorway as he leans down and lugs the whining body into the chamber. Once the bounty is sealed away, you step back out into the open.

Mando pushes past you almost without recognition, limping heavily.

“Hey—hey!” You trail behind him, reaching out to touch his arm. He flinches. “Could you at least let me do my job?”

He regards you for an extended beat, then readily sits. It’s more of a controlled collapse.

“Is it your leg?” You ask, kneeling beside him and helping him peel off what armor you can. He shakes his head.

“It’s just more of a bruise I—my side, my hip. Onto the top of my leg.”

You nod slowly. “Okay, can you get to the fresher yourself or do you think you’ll need help? You have to rinse off before I treat you.” There’s an almost clay-like layer of red dust on his clothes and armor. It would be impossible to treat him properly without getting most of it off.

He wordlessly extends a gloved hand for you to help him up, you oblige—albeit struggling a bit with his weight. Once standing, you hover beside him on his limping walk to the fresher until he gives you a short: “I’ve got it.” You back off, returning to tend to your dinner while you wait.

When he emerges again he’s only wearing a sleep shirt, his mask, and a towel, the fabric held at the hip by his clenched fist to expose an already bruising thigh. He sits on a crate with an audible wince, easing himself back to lean against the wall slightly.

Your throat constricts as you move to his exposed side, but you try to breathe evenly enough to maintain an air of professionalism. Which gets increasingly difficult when he, with another sound of sharp pain, pulls up his shirt to reveal a series of small, shallow punctures traveling up his flank and over his hip that slightly weep with a mixture of blood and the cold water on his skin. He holds the shirt, just below his pectorals with his opposing hand, allowing the towel to drape over his lap while still revealing the side you need to work on. You can see the faint cut of his abdominal muscles, tracing south alongside a thin trail of dark hair leading--

“Shotgun pellets,” his voice stops your thoughts before they can get any worse. You’re partially thankful. Glancing up, you furrow your brow in confusion. He clarifies, “they’re a uh… a projectile type weapon. He was fighting dirty and desperate.” You nod, looking back down. The worst of the spray was able to score the skin right above his hip, but most of it had just bounced off his quad, leaving a series of raised, purpling welts. It was superficial at worst, but still not the best to look at. He seemed to read your mind. “Beskar was able to deflect them for the most part. I’ll be fine, just cauterize the worst of it.”

“The more you use the cauterizer the more of a chance you have of the scar tissue getting infected, you know. That’s some business you want no part of,” you say, digging through your kit for a pain ointment and the bacta you were able to refill on Nevarro. The more you looked at it, the more foolish of a blow for him to have taken it becomes. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re doing this on purpose,” you’re muttering it to yourself before you can fulling think through the implications. When he doesn’t say anything, you glance up at him. “That was a joke.”

“You need to work on your material, then.”

You laugh, shaking your head to yourself as you get to work. It’s easier to feel more confident around him the longer you’ve acclimated on the Crest. You have a bad habit of using snark as a defense mechanism. The more you work with Mando, the less you’re able to keep that up. It feels nice, you can relax slightly when you’re given the reassurance of him reciprocating the conversation.

You finish pressing the last of the bandages against his side. “The pain stuff I used should start sinking in soon, it might burn for a bit beforehand but it’ll get better after a few minutes.” He nods, pulling the towel tightly around his waist before standing and limping back into his quarters. He returns, fully dressed, putting a little more pressure on his leg than he did before he left. You quickly, desperately, find a way to conceal your staring.

“Hey—I have a surprise for you,” you turn to the kitchenette, busying yourself by testing the stock with a messy sip. It’s not… the best thing you’ve ever made in your whole life, but it’s the closest thing to the meals you made with Am’ile that you’ve had since you left your old home. It smells lovely, enough to have filled the hull with the smell of the herbs you used. “I thought it was just gonna be me and the womp rat so I made dinner, if you wanna eat with us that is.” You pull out the bottle of wine you bought from one of the storage drawers, a slight heat rising to your cheeks. You hold it up triumphantly anyway. “I really just needed an excuse to buy this for myself. But I totally understand if you’d rather eat upstairs by yourself.”

“Thank you,” he says hesitantly. “I’ll… I’ll stay while you eat. I can take mine to the cockpit once you’ve finished.”

“Would you want to have a glass with me, at least?” You hold the wine bottle by the neck at your side. He’s grumpy. Part of you wants to find some way to fix that, knowing it would be hard for you to let yourself enjoy the rest of the night with him fuming over something just upstairs. “I’ll cover my eyes. It’ll be like when I brought you your meals, while you were fixing the ship. No peaking. I promise.”

He takes a moment, before nodding slowly, for some reason you’re kind of surprised he agrees. Maybe that’s why your smile is so big. Maybe it was the fact you’d already cracked the bottle open for a few sips before taking your shower, the warmth of it at the bottom of your stomach making it much easier to playfully prod at the bounty hunter. Probably a mix of both.

You kneel beside your bed to gather another pillow, placing it across the makeshift table you’ve fashioned out of two crate and one of your blankets. You turn to bring the rest of the food to the table, three wooden bowls and a plate for the kid. You’re in the middle of separating the meat from the broth for him when you glance up at Mando, who is still standing exactly where you last saw him. He points to the tuft of fabric you had placed on the floor for him.

“What’s that for?”

You’re not sure if he’s serious or not. “Um, comfort?”

He doesn’t say anything, just cocks his helmet slightly to the left.

“Alright, old man,” you roll your eyes, refilling your cup . “Suit yourself.”

Mando pauses for a second longer before easing himself onto the pillow. He says your name softly, almost to himself. “This looks… really great. Thank you.”

“Well I wouldn’t take it to heart too much, chrome bucket. I was planning on hoarding all this for me and the kid. You just came back at quite the opportune moment,” you grin cheekily up at him before tearing your piece of bread and dipping it into the broth.

He reaches across the makeshift table and picks up his cup. You’ve repurposed the tops of two of his thermoses to make them. He examines it in his hand for a moment before speaking.

“Were you singing that song that was on the radio, yesterday? When I came in?”

“Yeah,” you laugh, shaking your head to yourself as you reach over the table and grab the cup in his hand to fill it with the wine. “I haven’t heard it in ages, you know? Any music at all, honestly, but especially that song. It was one of my dad’s favorites,” you detract before either of you could linger on that last statement. “It’s been in my head all day. I was meaning to ask you, when it comes to the radio—it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for me to listen while you’re on the job, yeah? Tracing signals and all that?”

Mando mulls it over for a second, accepting his cup from you and staring down at it. “I’m not sure. Better safe than sorry, but I could ask around about getting a uh… one of those new portable ones.” You don’t want to tell him that those newfangled portable radios have been a thing since you were in the cradle—something about his technological obliviousness was oddly endearing. “I’ll ask around and see if there’s some kind of blocking signal we could install. If you’d like one, that is. I’d like to take a sip, now, if that’s okay?”

You nod, immediately putting your hands over your face. You know you could just squeeze your eyes shut like oh, maybe a _normal_ person might? But to be honest, it was a little funny to do. To act this silly in front of one of the most effective killing machines in the galaxy, who you have somehow convinced to attend a quaint family dinner. Might as well mess around a bit with it, yeah?

You hear the hiss of the mask resealing but you don’t remove your hands from your eyes. “It’s good wine,” he remarks. “You can look now.”

Removing your palms from your face, you blink your vision back to clarity, reaching for your cup again. Your mouth is already growing warm in the way that let you know that when Mando meant good he also meant strong. You have to agree.

“The people on Am’ile’s planet would make this crazy strong liquor out of these peaches that only grew in the valley where we lived. The village that was closest to us got super wealthy off of the stuff--honestly I can’t stomach anything too sweet anymore after it, spent an equal amount of time coming up as it did going down, if you get what I’m saying.” You screw up your face at even the thought of the syrup-like drink. “The orchards were super beautiful, though. The tallest foliage in the valley and they were maybe only a few heads taller than you. All types of critters living in the roots—that little one _loved_ it.” You gesture to the child, who was grabbing as much of the dish’s meat as he could in his stubby three-fingered hands. The rest of his plate remained untouched. “Am’ile and I used to take walks through it all the time, especially when I first got there. It was too dangerous to go into the forests by yourself so I would spend ages in the orchards if she wasn’t putting me to work, just for a change of scenery.” Your mouth kind of just keeps running. It just feels so… nice, to talk to someone without having to try and stutter your way through a new language. That and the liquid courage in your cup made you unapologetically chatty. “She had _so_ many little trinkets and things from her travels as a Republic medic, but only like _ten_ books tops, all on medicine. I literally have the things memorized at this point, they were the only things to read.”

“You could go back at some point, if you want. When there’s a lull in jobs I could probably drop you and the kid off, spend a few weeks with her while I keep hunting,” Mando casually picks up his glass again, and you automatically cover your eyes with your hands. You’re still smiling, just with a little weight behind it.

“No, no that’s okay. Am’ile would get in too much trouble with the locals, for good reason. It isn’t safe for them and—to be honest, Mando, I don’t think the kid could take being separated from you for that long,” you pause for a moment. “But that’s incredibly kind of you to offer, thank you. I mean that.”

His mask hisses back in place. You ease the index and middle finger of your right hand to peer at him playfully before lowering your hands again. It’s a gentle spar between the two of you, an easy rhythm to settle into.

“Your med-station,” he nods towards your table/bed set up, looking particularly messy in comparison to the hull you’d spent the day cleaning. “It’s…”

Your heart drops, ready for the scolding. “Ah—uh, I’m sorry.” You look down at your plate—even if he couldn’t see the heat rising to your face, you try to hide your embarrassment by stabbing at another bite of food. You glance up at him sheepishly. “It’s the only place on the Crest that’s tucked away enough, I didn’t want to get underfoot.”

“No, no.” He shakes his head. You swallow. “I like it. A good idea. It’s like a reminder whenever I leave, not to do anything too stupid.”

“Oh, well,” you’re not sure why that catches you off guard so much. You honestly had no idea he even processed your presence since you’d first moved in besides the occasional medical assistance you provided. “I’ll make sure to put the more intimidating syringes front-and-center the next time I organize it.”

And he _laughs_.

Well—so, okay. It’s not a full laugh, more like a few low releases of air, but there’s a clear smile behind it that you can definitely hear. It’s enough to have you slightly grinning to yourself the rest of the meal.

By the time you’re finished, you’re a bit hazy off the wine and incredibly sleepy. You lean back slightly and yawn, looking at where Mando has settled the kid on his lap. “Sometimes I wish I could just snap my fingers and he’d just go to sleep. There’s too much energy in that little guy.”

“I can take him for the night,” Mando is currently engaged in a gentle dance of keeping the little one’s hands away from the food you’ve portioned for the bounty hunter. It’s more amusing than it should be. “If you could just help me take this upstairs I’d be more than happy to.”

You nod, clamoring to your feet and grabbing his bowl as he climbs up into the cockpit with the kid. You follow and place his dinner on a clear spot on the console.

“Where are we going next?” You ask, glancing over the control panel as if you had _any_ idea what all those flashing lights and strange looking scanners meant. You should really pick up a flight manual at some point, just for the basics.

“The last fob,” Mando sighs. “Canto Bight. This—this is going to take a while, just warning you now. I still have no idea how I’m going to pull this off.”

You nod, yawning. You’re still a bit tipsy. “Okay, well, I think I’m gonna go to bed. Good luck brainstorming.” The food sits warm and heavy in your stomach. It’s been a long time since you’ve felt this full. It’s nice.

He gives a small nod acknowledging what you said, then goes back to grumbling down at the control panel, pushing buttons and examining scanners. You lean down to kiss the kid goodnight from where he’s babbling in the co-pilot’s seat, then climb down the ladder and change into your night clothes, setting the lights in the hull to night-mode as the Crest rumbles into the sky. Climbing into bed, you wrap your biggest blanket around yourself, the chill of hyperspace already settling in the air.

**

You have a dream. A bad one. One you’ve never had before and don’t know if you’d survive again if you did. It starts with you already crying. It’s one of those full-body, hiccuping sobs that usually rouses you from your sleep before things gets too bad.

Mando is gone, so far gone not even the comlink your finger is hovering over would be an option. You know this because the dream starts with him calling you. When you answer, there is only the sound of a hard, driving rain.

You’re holding the child against your chest and he’s _screaming_ into your ear but you know if you actually lift him away to look at him he’ll disappear into the rain, too, so you drop the communicator and turn and there’s blood all over the floor and you have to clean it, you do. You have to so maybe he’ll come back and so you’re here, mopping up the blood on the hull’s floor as the child wails the loudest you’ve ever heard him cry and you try to choke out reassurances through your own crying because.

Because the gore is on your hands and your elbows and on you and on the floor _once its gone it’ll be okay it’s so dark but it’ll be okay_ and streaking across the front of you and your face where you’ve tried to wipe it away _please go away_ because it looks just like when.

Looks just like when.

You wake up in the middle of screaming, gasping for breath, one hand pressed against the top of the table above you and the other curled into the mattress. It’s the first time that’s happened, waking up like that at least. The dreams are different each time and occur at different frequencies, but they always crescendo at the same point. Usually you just wake up, eyes slowly sliding open and fixing to whatever is directly in front of you as your vision slightly blurs. How banal it usually is, how banal it feels, adds to the cruelty. You’re mostly still able to go to sleep after, at least there was that.

Not this, though. This is that hand-scratching-at-your-own-throat kind of terror, the kind you’ve usually only seen in the holo-dramas. You haven’t had a nightmare like that for so long, so maybe the surprise of it is what made it so much worse—that it wasn’t just you. Maker, you can still hear the child’s squalling in your ears. That sound of raw, primal terror that—

You feel your stomach lurch. You scramble to the fresher, emptying the contents of your stomach into the toilet.

Half anxiety, half afraid to close your own eyes, the dull thrum of raw energy does little to calm itself once you manage to shove the door of the fresher close. You let the metal rim of the toilet cool your face as you sniff, scooting back to lean your back against the wall, pulling the sleeve of the sleepshirt you’re wearing up your palm to wipe your eyes.

A low voice says your name urgently. You look up, dazed for a moment, before the door is cracked open by four broad-knuckled fingers. Your hand flies out, catching the handle before Mando is able to pull it the rest of the way open. He barely has time to get his hand out of the way before you slam it shut again.

“I--sorry,” you croak. “Please um… please don’t come in here.”

“Are you okay?” His voice is rough with sleep. You cup your hands over your knees and lean your forehead down to rest against them. When you don’t answer, he speaks again. “Was it, was it about before? Before Am’ile?”

“I—I haven’t, for so—I haven’t… Before… It was…”

“I know. She told me, it’s alright, I wouldn’t have asked I just… I thought it was something you didn’t want to talk about but I--”

“I’m not a charity case,” it sounds snappier than you intended it to and has absolutely nothing to do with anything he’d just said. At this point you’re just talking to yourself, it seems like he knows that. “That’s not why Am’ile pawned me off on you. I’m okay, I didn’t need her supervision anymore. I’m, I’m _okay_. It’s taken a long time but I am now so I don’t know _why_ \--”

“No,” and he says your name forcefully, cutting you off before you can continue. He repeats himself, this time softly, before: “It’s alright.” Does his voice sound… warmer? Even through a layer of reinforced steel? “I want you to feel safe, here. Comfortable. I don’t care, it’s okay. I just thought you were hurt.” He clears his throat. “I have them too, the dreams. So you, you don’t have to worry about hiding it. Them.” You don’t know what to say, so you say nothing at all. Closing your eyes, you lean the side of your face into the door separating the two of you. It’s so silent on the other side you think he’s left, so when he speaks again it’s all the more surprising. “And she didn’t pawn you off. I need you. Here.”

Something in your chest does a complete backflip. Your stomach is fluttering so ferociously you have to clear your throat before continuing. “Okay. Yeah, um. Thank you,” you wince. “I’m gonna freshen up and then get the little one out of your hair—er, beskar.” _Idiot idiot idiot_.

“It’s alright, you didn’t wake him. If you want I can… I can sit with you, until you fall asleep.”

“Okay.” You say it softly. “That would be really nice, actually. Thank you.”

You quickly brush your teeth, then open the door the door slowly. Stepping into the hull and closing it behind you, you pad back to your mattress. He follows a few feet behind you quietly—it’s moments like these you’re grateful for his reserved nature. You don’t have the energy to try and brush things off by filling the silence with mindless chatter.

Kneeling beside your mattress, you wordlessly offering him an armful of your pillows. In the low light of the Crest’s night mode, the beskar helmet looks nearly featureless, save for the gleam of light that arcs up its surface as he looks down at what you’ve offered him.

“Could you—” your voice breaks. Heat rises to your face as you clear your throat again. “Is it okay if the kid um… slept with me? It was… some of it was about—”

“Yeah, of course,” Mando takes one of the pillows from the top of what you’ve offered him, tossing it at the ground of the opposing wall and then slipping out of sight as he goes into his bunk. He returns with a the child, standing above you as you crawl into bed, wrapping you blanket around yourself, setting up the pillows as you normally do for the naps you take together, preventing any accidental rolling-over. Mando crouches to place the kid beside you, then stands and settles where he’d dropped the pillow previously. You take a moment to look down at the child, running a thumb over the edge of his ear, before kissing his soft forehead where you normally do. He wrinkles his nose in his sleep, making a soft sound and twitching his ears before wiggling slightly to resettle. You rest your head back on your pillow. The specifics of the dream are already starting to drift away. It’s a small mercy, but it’s enough.

“Hey, Mando?” You lift your head, the low light reducing the man to a dark, featureless outline.

“Hm?”

“Would you mind if… um… would you mind if I just touched your hand? Just so uh… if I wake up I can know you’re there?” As the words spill out of your mouth, an unbearable heat rises to your face.

There’s the sound of him shifting, getting to his feet with a grunt. Then he’s right there, sitting with his back to the wall, just a few inches from the top of your head. Tentatively, you reach out your hand, resting your index and middle fingers against his palm. And it’s _his_ palm, His palm, warm but rough with callouses, resting on the floor beside his extended leg just for you to be able to close your eyes, even for a little bit.

It takes a while but it works. Right as you drift back to sleep you think you feel his hand gently wrap around the fingers you’ve offered him. You really think you do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the comments thus far !! they really mean so much to me. if you want to join me in screaming about the finale my tumblr is @spvce-cowboy <3
> 
> that said i am .,..... beyond excited about the next chapter for two reasons of equal importance: fancy parties and Very Jealous Mando. my favorite things 😌


	3. reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The luxurious rot of Canto Bight is enough to put anyone on edge. Mando is forced to ask for your help in finding a high profile quarry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: alcohol, drug use mentioned, jealous/protective mando, animal cruelty, gore

Mando leaves the fighting ring before the caterwauling nexu is able to deal the killing blow.

He can still hear the sound of the gore spraying against the floor as he climbs the stairs towards the exit, the roaring jeer of the crowd obliterating the speakers inside his helmet. The inevitable outcome of the fight was clear from its onset given the state of the nexu’s opponent, some kind of sand-bear, who was already injured upon entering the cage-like structure.

This wasn’t the Outer-Rim fighting rings he was used to. This place has _carpets_ and a _fucking chandelier_ suspended right above the blood clotted, dirt floor of the pit. It has pipe smoke and dark liquor, the low rumble of voices that only rise in tandem with the progression of the fight. There’s a strange reserve among this crowd that Mando has never seen before, not in this context at least.

The patrons still had that starved look in their eyes though—bloodlust, pure and simple. Somehow, all the tuxedos and hair gel makes it far more sinister than it normally would be.

Karga sent him here to gather information about the quarry, but after an entire day spent searching along with the past hour he’d spent floating around the fight hall where the informant was rumored to be, he knew to give it up before he wasted any more time.

Mando exits the underground arena, stepping into the late afternoon heat just as it begins its gradual descent towards an oncoming chill. Upon arriving at Canto Bight, he had learned very quickly to avoid the main streets. There were too many eyes and whispers for a bounty as high profile as this one for him to be spotted on his own like this, obviously searching for something. 

There’s something about this city that makes him absolutely revolted. It’s not the strongest testament to his resolve or his character, but, at the same time, it’s not something he can necessarily help.

Mando still has absolutely no clue what Karga was thinking, but here he is, regardless if it made any sense or not.

He returns to the Crest, deflated after a second unsuccessful day of trying to gather information about the quarry’s whereabouts. He is desperate for a lead, two of three informants proving to be completely useless and his patience growing thinner every _second_ he has to stay on this forsaken planet.

Closing the ramp behind him, Mando heads straight for the cockpit, needing a moment to regather his thoughts. To brainstorm a better plan of action before it becomes too late to rendezvous with Karga’s third, and last, possible informant.

The problem was that there was _absolutely no way_ he was going to be able to get into the racetracks on his own. Getting into the fighting pit—which was considered “seedy” by Canto standards--was already a total hassle, costing him far too many credits and straining what limited negotiation skills he had.

The second problem was that he’d rather take a blaster to the leg than involve you in one of his missions. But now that was kind of his only option.

Mando rubs a hand over the forehead of his helm as he paces. When that doesn’t work, he settles himself in his pilot’s seat, hunching over slightly against the weight of the beskar against his bones. Maker, he is fucking _tired_.

Swiveling his head to the side, he notices a pile of something on the console that he can’t exactly make out until he leans over it.

Resting on the command board is a leather string, a few palm-sized pieces of stained glass already fashioned to hang from it by smaller loops of the same material in varied lengths. It looks like you were in the middle of working on it when something else distracted you, several more discs of glass piled onto one another to the right of the unfinished project, and a few loose scraps of leather in a pile on the copilot’s chair.

Mando allows himself to admire it for a moment, rubbing his gloved thumb over the glass’s surface. By the time he glances up through the windows of the cockpit, looking at all the people milling about outside, his breathing has somewhat evened. It’s easier to think straight, at least.

He stands and climbs back into the hull, rounding the corner to peer into the space you’ve made for yourself.

It takes him a moment to see you over the pile of blankets you’ve kicked off your mattress. You’re asleep. Under the table. The kid taking a nap with you. Of course that’s where he expected you to be if you weren’t in the cockpit but—but.

You’re on your belly, head buried in your folded arms. You have one, bare leg hitched up over pillow. The length of your calf spills over onto the floor, socked foot delicately pointed. That’s not really what stops him in his tracks. Well, it is in part.

But you’re wearing one of his shirts.

It must have just been a mistake, he knows that. He’s seen you in one of your own that’s the same general color and cut, but he knows this one is his because of the hole in the elbow where it had caught on an exposed screw and torn a few days previous. He’d been too busy to mend it.

Mando tries to wake you before his thoughts could go anywhere else. He says your name quietly, then a little louder. It wakes the kid, who yawns and blinks up at Mando, making happy sounds up at him from where he’s snuggled into your side.

When that doesn’t work, Mando nudges your calf with the tip of his boot. You startle awake, a protective hand shooting out to automatically bring the child against your chest, blinking rapidly up at him.

“Oh,” you wince slightly at the light coming into the cabin but otherwise doesn’t visibly react when you realize it’s him. Your arm loosens from where it had wrapped around the kid. “You’re back. I thought you’d be gone a while longer.”

“I need your help with something,” Mando crosses his arms in front of his chest. It gives him something to do with his hands and how awkward they feel just hanging at his sides as you prop yourself up into a sitting position to listen to him, the loose material of his shirt pulling up to reveal little glimpses of your lower back and belly as you do. “I have to have a companion with me, to go into the racetrack. They won’t let me in if they think I’m looking for a quarry.” 

You nod, rubbing your eye with the heel of your palm, voice croaking and still hazy with sleep. “Yeah, yeah sure. I wanted to check it out anyway. Just lemme get changed and we can head out.”

You pick the kid up and place him back on the floor of the hull. He toddles over to Mando, nearly falling—your hands automatically reach out to hover over his sides--but he manages to catch himself on Mando’s pantleg, tugging the fabric in a determined _up, now_.

Your brow furrows. “What’re we gonna—”

“There’s a nursery. Karga cleared it,” Mando reaches down and scoops up the kid. 

“Gotcha,” your voice already sounds clearer. You reach out a hand for Mando to pull you up, he obliges. The blankets fall from where they’ve pooled around your lap as you do.

You pad down the length of the hull towards the fresher, your hips sway with the movement as you lift an arm to continue rubbing the sleep from your face. The shorts you’re wearing are a few sizes too big, you have them rolled twice at the waistband to keep them up. Mando looks away sharply once he notices. 

“Alright womp rat, how does some dinner sound?” Mando smiles to himself when the kid gives an impatient squeak. “Yeah, yeah okay alright. I’m the worst caregiver in the galaxy, I know.” The child keeps giggling as Mando makes his way into the cockpit.

Mando is running through some of the Crest’s vitals on the command board when he hears you climbing up the ladder.

“Do you think this would be okay, for the racetrack?” There’s a certain timid quality to your voice he doesn’t think he’s heard before. You have also literally never asked him for approval on something, so he’s already a bit surprised before he turns to look at you. 

The clothes you chose were simple, a fitted long sleeve and a pair of loose-fitting pants long enough to at least partially conceal your work boots. It shouldn’t have felt like much of a departure from your usual roster of outfits because it really wasn’t, but for some reason there’s something different about it that he can’t put his finger on.

You have your hair piled on top of your head in a bun. With it pulled back like that, all attention is drawn to the canvas of your neck, your delicate throat that gently eases into the soft planes of your face. There’s a nonchalant beauty to you that sucks all previous thoughts straight from his head.

“You might want to bring something warmer, a jacket or something.” He turns back to the command board, desperate to look busy and hide how long he looked for. “Temperatures drop on Cantonica as soon as the sun starts setting.”

“Oops—yep. Desert planet. I forgot,” you sigh. He hears the sound of your boots scaling the ladder back down.

He purposefully doesn’t look up when you enter the cockpit again, when you announce you’re ready he nods curtly, making brief but direct eye contact with you before setting a quick pace out of the Crest and into the streets of Canto Bight.

The nursery is tucked away, out of reach and notice, protection guaranteed. He leads you through a series back-street passages to get there, too nervous about the attention the three of you would get with the kid and the main roads. You carry him against your hip most of the way, occasionally adjusting the little hood you’ve fashioned to cover his most distinguishable features with every person you pass. 

The door is nondescript, positioned in the alleyway behind a semi-busy restaurant. Mando can sense your apprehension the second he steps up to press the buzzer. Within seconds, there’s the sound of a series of bolts unlocking.

A warm faced woman opened the door, wearing the clean white uniform of a nurse. “When Karga called in I hardly believed it,” her voice is light, but there’s a grating, nervous squeak to it that makes Mando scowl. Maybe it was just the day he was having, but just about anything was able to set him off.

Mando and the nurse exchange a few blunt words about pricing and care. He winces, slightly, at the cost, but it’s not anything either of you could notice. Right as Mando is about to turn to take the kid from your arms, you speak up.

“Is this… safe?” You ask again, holding the kid a little tighter to your chest. He realizes that it’s the first time since you’ve joined them that you’re separating from the kid, Mando thinks his anxiety is partially feeding off of yours. 

“Karga gave me his word. It’ll only be for a few hours.” Mando glances at the nurse, who was giving the two of you her very best customer service smile. “C’mon pal,” Mando nods towards the nurse. The child’s big eyes stare apprehensively up at you, then at Mando. One of his small hands unfixes itself from your shirt to reach out towards the bounty hunter. The nurse clucks her tongue, her hands on her hips.

“Someone seems like he’s already gonna miss his daddy.”

His stomach drops without warning. “I’m not his father.” The correction is biting in a way he doesn’t intend it to be. He’s vividly aware of your sharp inhale at his words. The nurse looks startled for a half second before blinking her eyes and retaining composure.

“Yes, yes of course,” she stretches out a hand as an offering of assurance towards the child, who has resumed clinging to the fabric of your shirt. “Hey little guy, c’mon. I’ve got a lot of friends for you to play with, and some snacks. You like the sound of that?” 

Mando catches your smile at the child’s ears flicking with interest, despite the fact that his hands are still firmly attached to you. Mando mutters something under his breath before taking the child from you, handing him off to the nurse and trying to push down the terrible feeling it gives him hearing the kid give a small whimper as the two of you walk away.

The racetrack is down a major boulevard, towering sandstone buildings line either side, their circular doors illuminated by bands of glowing yellow neon. The streets are a different kind of polished stone that makes Mando’s skin absolutely _crawl_ for not discernible reason.

He thinks you’ve caught on to his worsening mood because you try to keep the conversation warm and light in a way he’s never seen you do before. Your eyes are fixed to a constant arcing movement, taking in as much of it as you can, but your mouth keeps moving about anything _but_ Canto Bight. You avoidance just draws more focus towards the situation at hand, but he appreciates the effort.

When the two of you reach the racetrack, you stop talking completely as you scale the stands. You and Mando settle on two chairs pulled up to a tiny table, overlooking the standing room crowd below. Mando faces the crowds more than the track itself, however you angle your chair so that you can look at the racing fathiers with ease. Eventually you turn away, grimacing.

“What is it?” He asks, out of curiosity as well as a desire to fill the silence.

“They’re so beautiful,” you cast one more glance over the track as the group rumbles past to the sharp roar of the crowd. “But they look so sad.” You keep looking at the beasts for a beat longer before fixing your gaze to your hands clasped in your lap.

Mando finds his words slowly. “This planet… this amount of abundance. There is always a cost. They always make someone else pay.”

You wince, shifting your body so you’re only facing Mando and the expanse of the crowd that’s over his shoulder. You don’t look at the track for a while after that, purposefully keeping your body turned to keep your gaze away.

Mando finds fleeting solace in the fact that he was at least able to keep you away from the fighting ring, which is quickly replaced by guilt in exposing you to a similar cruelty in a less bloody form. He does his best to remind himself that you mentioned wanting to see the races previously, that the indecipherable emotion on your face was not entirely his fault.

The wait spans an hour. The tension in Mando’s shoulders grows with each passing minute.

“He isn’t coming,” Mando eventually grits out. “It’s… Maker I—”

Jobs have started off way worse than this, he’s not sure why he’s allowing all of it to get under his skin. It’s this damn city, something about it makes him feel like there is a knifepoint digging between his ribs.

You tap his hand lightly. Twice, with your index and middle fingers. It happens so quickly he’s almost able to believe he’s imagined it if it weren’t for the fact that you were still adjusting your hands in your lap after your hand had retreated. As if you didn’t know what possessed you to do that, either.

“Hey. It’s fine. It’ll work itself out, yeah?” You maneuver your head to stare directly into his visor. For some reason that alone is infinitely more intimate than your brief touch. “We can just stay here for a bit longer in case the informant shows up, then pick up the kid, grab something to eat and hunker down in the Crest. Tomorrow’s a new day, or whatever.”

Mando looks you over, then nods.

The sun is setting on the horizon, the tracks illuminated by the last vestiges of its light. This is the beginning of most everyone’s day, yet the drinks are already flowing, and have been for quite some time.

There are far too many extravagant outfits, ridiculous little hats barely teetering on large skulls. The roar of the crowd grows with their drunkenness, the races becoming crueler the more the stands fill. Mando will never understand the value in any of this and he’s genuinely not sure what’s worse—the icy coolness of the fighting rink or whatever all this is.

“Who’s the quarry?” You blink up at him. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Tyreus Cavill. Some filthy rich kid who doesn’t know how to keep his damn mouth shut. He’s taunting the Gild to the point of insult,” Mando rubs his hand over the brow of his helm. “It’s been confirmed that he’s supposed to be at some kind of party tonight. That was just about the only information I could get.”

“Was that why Karga mentioned deep cover?”

Mando nods. “He said it would be my most viable option, which doesn’t make any kind of sense. Especially with no pre-existing contacts that could get me any intel on where he’s hiding.”

You speak up after a while. Mando isn’t sure how long, too comfortable in the silence as is.

“You know my mother worked for the Alderaanian court?” You say it softly, quickly looking at the racetrack to avoid drawing attention to your words. You’re kneading the hem of your sweater, a nervous tick of yours he couldn’t help but notice. “I still remember all the things she had to teach me when we went to dinners at the homes of the survivors, the etiquette and everything. I’m positive it’s much of the same, here. All this,” you twirl your index finger in the air, gesturing to the whole of the track and presumably what lay beyond. “Seems very familiar. I could help, if you need it.” 

“Your mother?”

“She was the court singer--or, well, one of them,” your voice is tense. “My father was a professor. I don’t remember a lot, just that they loved me very much.” Your eyes are searching the crowd in some desperate search for something, he’s not sure what. Probably for any kind of distraction, or any reason to keep your eyes away from his. He waits in silence, patiently. “They moved to a different planet to have me, a few years before the annihilation, there were a few other survivors who were off planet when it happened. I remember my parents hosting them, and they us, on a few occasions. It was always a multi-day affair of trying to remind me what proper manners were.” You wrinkle your nose. “It’s all very stupid, if you ask me. But,” you turn your head finally and look at him evenly. “I can—”

Mando watches as your gaze floats to a space just above his left shoulder. Your entire body visibly tenses, lips parted in what he can only think is total shock. Your hands drop the edge of your shirt and hover in your lap, as if you don’t know what to do with them.

Before Mando can ask what is wrong, you’re getting up from the table and pushing through the crowd. It takes him a beat to register what has just happened before he is up and following after you, making considerably better time in catching up given the fact that the crowd seems to naturally part for him. He almost reaches out to touch you, but instead settles for aiding your pursuit by keeping pace and staying at your side, clearing a path for you with his body and an outstretched arm to motion people to the side.

“What is it?” He tries to keep his voice low enough to not be overheard, his head in a constant survey of the crowds before you. You shake your head and keep pushing forward, higher into the stands, swerving around servers with platters stacked high with strange looking drinks. “Hey—if we go any further we’d need clearance—" the higher in the stands, the richer the patrons get. They wouldn’t let either of you in without identification after the eighth flight, which you’d just swiftly pushed past. Mando checks over his shoulder and, sure enough, a server is murmuring something to a guard droid, pointing up at you.

You’re so far up by that time that you have at least a minute until the droid catches up with the two of you. You climb onto one of the raised platforms dotted with various aristocratic parties, dining over bright white table cloths, centerpieces of bizarre orange flowers bursting through the tables. You make a beeline for the centermost table, where a Twi’lek woman is dining with an Abednedo and a human male.

You approach the Twi’lek in three swift strides, grabbing her shoulder. “Febhana.”

When the woman turns, standing, there’s a kind of wide-eyed shock of absolute wonder that immediately turns into pure joy. The two of you leap into one another’s arms in a cacophony of ecstatic, indistinguishable sounds. One of some long awaited reunion.

The Twi’lek woman, Febhana, holds your face in her hands, yours slide over hers. There are tears in her eyes as the two of your chatter over one another in breathless delight. 

“I thought you—”

“I had no idea that—”

“I’ve tried to find—”

You both cut each other off, staring into one another’s eyes before laughing again and embracing tightly.

From over your shoulder, Febhana gives Mando one of the quickest, scathing once-overs he’s ever received. He can’t help but automatically have a little bit of respect for it, especially compared to the terrified, diverted eyes of her companions.

“Who is this?” She asks, pulling away from your embrace slightly. You open your mouth to respond but she’s already babbling over your warmly. “Oh! No. Don’t tell me. Not yet. Let’s do this over drinks at mine— _please_. Please indulge me. Maker, _look at you_.”

You let loose a laugh Mando doesn’t think he’s heard before. A certain tonal quality of complete release, familiarity. You nod as Febhana clasps your face between her hands again, in marvel. Mando doesn’t blame her, with that look of utter joy on your face he’d—

Well.

“Do excuse us,” Febhana swiftly addresses her dinner mates, they nod and mutter forgiveness, eyes still fixed to the ground. Mando knows for a fact that at least one of them has a fob on them by the tight anxiety exchanged in their brief glances towards one another. He ignores it for the sake of maintaining the moment between you and your friend.

Mando trails behind the two of you by a few paces. As Febhana guides you through the crowds, she waves off the guard droid with an elegantly manicured hand.

**

Febhana’s apartment could be considered a house twice over by Mando’s book. She leads you and him through so many tall-ceilinged hallways and rooms to get to the… lounge, he guesses would be a proper term for it… that he genuinely can’t remember where the entrance is.

The room contains a bar stocked better than any cantina on Nevarro, a few odd pieces of furniture, and a large fireplace. Heavy, dark blue curtains hang from windows so tall he has to crane his head upwards to see the top. He guesses the luxury is communicated through the refusal to occupy the space with much else, despite the fact that it could be considered a small banquet hall.

Febhana makes you and her drinks while you settle on one of the sloping, white couches, scanning the room in the same way Mando has been, with a little more plain wonder in your eyes.

Mando hovers on the periphery, unsure of where to place himself until you motion him over to sit on one of the opposing chairs, equally abstract as the rest of the furniture. Febhana settles across from you on the couch, handing you your drink before leaning back and kicking off her heels.

The two of you are in a constant chatter that has so many names and dates and overlapping speech that Mando has a difficult time keeping up. What he does catch is limited and mostly inferred: the two of you escaped from the same warlord at different times, Febhana was able to scale the social ranks of Canto Bight with ease and an inherited wallet--most importantly, the two of your missed each other very much.

It’s been at least an hour since the three of you sat down when Febhana directly addresses Mando for the first time.

“And what are you doing here, Mandalorian?” 

Mando feels your eyes on him, burning, as you take a sip of your cocktail. 

“She saved my life,” he manages as a straightforward reply. “I’ve hired her as a medic.”

“Febhana,” you say. When you’re slightly tipsy like this, you have a breathless wonder in the way you go about describing things. “It’s… it’s been so good. I’ve been practicing all these languages and… Maker, all the _places_ I’ve been. It’s just like you described, when we would tell each other stories to go to sleep. Everything’s so _big_ and there are so many _people_.”

Febhana throws back her head in a laugh, nodding. “Well I know _that_ , darling. Oh, stars, it’s so good to _look at you_ again.”

You and Febhana go back and forth a while longer still, Mando happily settles into the rhythm of it. There’s the warm, familiar way women get so engrossed in one another that he finds completely novel, if not enviable. It softens something in him to see you so relaxed as you prompt Febhana to detail her exploits, the excited yip you make when she flashes you the wedding band strung on a series of thin gold chains looped around her neck.

Then again, the way the two of you seem so physically intimate occasionally makes something in his chest constrict uncomfortably. He isn’t sure where it comes from, all the little touches you give each other seem to come from a place of purely platonic joy in reunion. But there’s a little jolt in his stomach whenever he sees it happen. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it as jealousy, but… she gets to _feel you_. So unabashedly.

At some point there’s a lull in the conversation. You take this moment to stretch your arm across the couch, clasping Febhana’s hands in your own. “We’re actually here for a specific reason,” you say. “And I’m only asking you out of genuine, pure desperation—Mando… has a job, here. That’s gotten a little tricky. The bounty is on the head of Tyreus Cavill.” Febhana’s eyes widen considerably, but other than that she maintains composure. Taking a deep breath, you continue, “He needs to find him, Febhana—there’s intel that he’s supposed to be at some kind of event. Possibly tonight.” You glance up at Mando to check if you’re getting the details right, he gives you brief nod of assurance when you do. “Do you know anything about it?”

Febhana scoffs, shaking her head and withdrawing her hand from yours to grab her drink resting on the low glass table in front of you. “If you’re referring to what I think you are, it would be the Gathering of Rams, one of the most exclusive events hosted on Canto. I’d imagine that’s why he’d dare show his face, even with the price on his head. Unless you already have an in, you’re fucked, Mandalorian. That place is more fortified than a warship.”

You visibly deflate. “What do you mean?”

“It’s an old, and I mean _old_ , money tradition. A dinner for just about every despicable person in the galaxy. I’ve only heard rumors about what goes on, definitely some serious cult-y type shit, oaths, rituals, the like.” She chews on a nail as she thinks. Something in her eyes lights up. “Wait. I think I… yes! Yes, I got the announcement a few weeks ago. Stars I think—” she looks down at the device on the inside of her wrist, tapping on it until—“Christ you two are the luckiest couple of bounty hunters in the galaxy, you know that? The Tagges are hosting the afterparty, tonight. The most eligible of all of Canto Bight will be there, and then some. I was invited a few weeks ago, I’d completely forgotten. With any luck he’ll be dumb and drunk enough after the Gathering to go.”

“The Tagges?” Your voice is filled with apprehension. You glance to Mando, then quickly back to your friend. “Febhana, there’s no way he can get in.”

“Hm, I’d think so too but there could be a chance…” Her eyes narrow, her face breaking into a toothy grin. “No, I’m a complete idiot. Maker, this is gonna be perfect--most of the ladies in waiting here dress their guard droids as glorified curtains. It’s a new _thing_ if you get what I’m saying. If we go in together and disguise the Mandalorian as even more of a hunk of metal than he already is—” Mando grunts at the slight jab—“all one of us would have to do is get the target by himself with a little eye-batting and it would be a done deal.” 

You and Mando speak in unison.

“I am _not_ going to be a honeypot.”

“ _She will not_.”

Febhana raises a brow, one side of her mouth pulling up in poorly concealed amusement.

“Oh I suggested no such thing, I’d happily volunteer. But I _do_ need a wing-woman, for appearance’s sake. I am taken, you know,” she flashes the wedding band again, pulling the collar of her dress down a fraction to do so. “Would be unbecoming to go on the prowl in public like that without pretending like I was just assisting.”

Mando glances over at you, trying to gauge your reaction to her proposal before he came off as to overbearing. He didn’t have the right to, he knows that. But there’s some raw part of him that winces at the very thought of you and your safety getting involved in one of his jobs. Maker if you got hurt in any way—

Febhana’s voice breaks his thought before it can be fully formed. “Oh, this is going to be _excellent_.” She practically purrs, jumping off the couch and extending her hand towards you to help you up. You comply, giving Mando a raised-brow glance of _well, let’s see where this goes_.

As Febhana begins leading you across the room, Mando stands.

“Should I contact the nursery to let them know to keep the child overnight?”

“The child?” Febhana’s eyes flick between you and Mando quickly. “I’m sorry, what?”

You curse under your breath, pressing your hand against your forehead. “A kid we’re looking after,” you clarify for Febhana. “I’m so sorry Mando, I got excited so it completely slipped my mind. I…” you bite your lip. “If you feel like it would be safe doing that I… guess that should be fine.”

“My wife could also look after it,” Febhana regards Mando evenly for a moment. “If you’re worried about safety. Would that be sufficient?”

Your eyes brighten slightly, glancing at Mando, tilting your head in question.

Mando nods, addressing Febhana directly. “If she trusts you, I do. I can travel back and get him while the two of you get ready.”

“I’ll send a car for you,” Febhana throws the remark over her shoulder, already busying herself by flinging the double doors that lead into the hallway back open.

You inhale sharply as if remembering something, tapping your friend on the shoulder before she begins to walk down the hall. “Wait, Febhana—the car, is there maybe a taxi service you could call? With an actual driver? He… we don’t really ‘do’ droids, if possible.” 

“I have an ‘actual’ driver, darling,” Febhana playfully chides. Her eyes flick towards Mando. “I’ll ring him, he’ll be downstairs in a moment. You remember where the entrance is, right?” 

Your delicate rephrasing, that “we,” rings in Mando’s ears for the entire trip back to the nursery. 

Mando quickly returns with the child, slightly weirded out by the enclosed landspeeder Febhana sent for him. It’s unlike anything he’d seen before, more like a carriage than any hover-craft he’d ever set foot in. There’s a dividing curtain between the passenger cabin and the driver’s seat, which he has pushed away to make sure the silent man at the wheel doesn’t try anything. 

The driver has a stony demeanor that seems very similar to Febhana’s—she clearly wasn’t one to suffer fools, and the people she surrounded herself with seemed to reflect that. Thinking back to the way you initially interacted with Mando, he could potentially see how your shared history with Febhana could have informed that. The characteristic briskness, the unflinching resolve. 

The child spends most of the returning trip chattering in relief, little hands reaching out to touch Mando’s beskar in a continuous greeting.

“Right here, kid. Always right here,” he affectionately rubs the corner of the child’s ear. There’s a heavy guilt that had settled itself in the bottom of Mando’s stomach since dropping him off.

He wants to apologize in some way, to blame it on his mood or the mounting anxiety surrounding the job, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete jackass. So he settles for bowing his helm to bump foreheads with the kid in a small display of reassurance. It seems to settle something in both him and the child almost immediately.

Mando glances up sharply, nearly forgetting the parted dividing curtain. The man, a wiry looking human male, glances back at the two of them through the thin pane of the rearview mirror, then returns to chain smoking while wildly maneuvering his way through traffic. 

The hover-car’s abrupt stop breaks him from his thoughts. He glances out the window, recognizing Febhana’s apartment building. The entire block is in a similar style as the boulevard you both had walked down earlier, circular doors outlined by bands of glowing yellow light. The only difference were the towering, wrought iron gates in front of each building and a set of tall stairs made of the same sandstone leading up to each house. The driver gets out and opens the landspeeder’s door for Mando and the kid, then steps forward and unlocks the gate, holding it open for the two of them.

“Sir.” The driver’s voice is more of a growl. If it weren’t for the enhanced settings of Mando’s visor, it would be too dark to see the mass of scar tissue that formed a jagged line across the man’s throat. The old wound is only partially concealed by the lapel of his coat pulled up against the drizzling rain. He’s abnormally tall, so thin that it looks as if his skull is actively attempting to escape his face. “Febhana’s apartment is the third buzzer. The service droid will let you in. She told me you should follow it.” The cigarette balancing against his lip bobs as he speaks, his heavy drawl disrupted only in part by his eviscerated voice box.

Mando’s lip curls slightly but he nods, thanking the driver, ducking out of the hover-car and climbing the steps leading to the apartment’s door.

Just as the driver said, the front door of Febhana’s apartment is opened by a droid. Mando stiffens despite the fact that the thing just barely reaches his knee. It gives off a series of little sounds before turning away and maneuvering down the front hall. Muttering something unsavory about Canto Bight under his breath, Mando follows it inside.

When he arrives at the threshold of Febhana’s dressing room, she’s only just started pulling out dresses for you to try on. He deflates slightly, really hoping that the two of you would have gotten this part over with so he could begin scoping out the Tagge mansion as soon as possible.

Mando accepts his fate and seats himself for the time being, placing the kid on the ground to let him toddle over to you. You lean down immediately and scoop him up, lifting him in the air with a happy: “Hey, stinky!” The child giggles as you snuggle him to your chest, pressing kisses all over his face in reunion. 

You keep gently playing with the kid as you and Febhana resume your conversation: wiggling your fingers over his face for him to grab, tickling his tummy, gently pinching his socked feet. It’s something you sink into so naturally Mando can’t help but be mesmerized by it. It calms something in him, to see both of you like that. He pushes the implications of that feeling away for the time being, as he always does.

Febhana gives the kid a bit of a once-over but looks overall disinterested, turning her attention back to rummage through her closet. “So it’s supposed to be a formal dance, but if it’s anything like the similar things I’ve gone to, that shit quickly disintegrates. But it’s still weirdly important for them to keep up the illusion of appearances, even though most rooms with closeable doors are occupied by people railing lines or fucking. Or both. Usually both.” The Twi’lek woman plucks out some kind of red, silken shift, holding it in the air then shaking her head and returning to her hunt. “I’ve been to enough Tagge parties to be a familiar face, we can play you off as an old friend of mine, some kind of lady-in-waiting thing or whatever. Crowds like these don’t tend to prod too deeply into personal histories, and with tits like yours I don’t think they’ll be interested in asking too many questions.”

Mando clenches his jaw so hard something starts hurting. You give a bit of an embarrassed laugh, quickly diverting the conversation. “So how do we get introduced to Cavill?”

“Honestly? The easiest thing to do would be getting you to snuggled up with one of his friends. He runs around with a group of bachelors who are not… pleasant company by any standards. Snotty rich kids,” she makes a face. “But if that’s not an option I could try to push some of my contacts there to get us into their circle. Seriously, darling, with men like this involved it is probably going to be one of the easiest bounties he’s ever going to collect.”

The strain being placed on every cell in Mando’s body in response to this conversation alone says the exact opposite.

Febhana continues pulling out dresses, layering some over a bench and discarding others all together.

“Febhana, will they know?” You ask it suddenly, your tone—not tense, necessarily, but definitely controlled, as if you were expecting an answer you didn’t want to hear but were willing to take regardless.

“It’s the Tagge family, so of course they know what happened to that fucker, but I don’t think they would care,” she waves off your fearful tone with a shake of her head. “Just as long as we make a bit of an effort to conceal your identity, for formality’s sake, it’ll be fine.”

“What happened to who?” Mando asks. Once he does, all the air is immediately sucked out of the room.

After an extended moment. “You didn’t tell him?” Febhana’s head cocks, you visibly swallow.

“I um…” your nostrils flare with the sharp inhale you take as you search for the right words. “When I escaped…”

Febhana interrupts. “She stabbed the shit out of the warlord who owned us. All his wife found was pulp. Didn’t take it well, the cunt. Nearly catatonic. The rest of us were able to practically waltz out of there because of this one. Owe this gorgeous bitch my life. All of us do.”

You smile at Febhana, reaching out to squeeze her hand. She winks at you, covering it with her own before turning to go rifle back through her closet. You keep your gaze to your hands when she does, lips pressed together. Mando doesn’t remove his eyes from you as Febhana continues. 

“So it might be a little difficult getting her in there, but to be honest the Tagges hated him anyway. Rival business type stuff, though, not the whole holding women captive or worker’s rights violations and debt bondage thing,” her voice drips with a kind of contempt that Mando prays he’ll never have directed his way. He notices your hands tighten slightly from where they lay in your lap, your arms loosely looped around the kid who now sits upright in your lap. “I know someone who can forge some papers well enough to present to the guards, he owes me some favors anyway,” Febhana continues. “They’ll be ready by the time we have to leave. Doll you up enough and I’m sure it’ll be fine—ah!” It is only then that Mando looks back over to the Twi’lek woman. Her eyes are lit up, fanged mouth pulled upwards in a triumphant smile. The dress in her hand is a deep plum color, fabric so thin he cannot make out what it actually looks like without a form to fill it. You reach out to it, rubbing the dress between your thumb and index finger.

“Perfect.” You and Febhana say it in unison, your widest smile of the night parted up at her. There’s a delighted, mischievous tilt to your mouth he’s never seen before.

Mando swallows, despite the sudden tightness in his throat. 

He waits outside while the two of you change, sitting on a strange tufted seat pushed against the hallway’s bay window. It’s piled with an obnoxious amount of silken pillows—it seems the longer you’ve been with him, the more surfaces his beskar encounters that it never would have otherwise. A part of him is able to find the humor of that, despite the discomfort of feeling wildly out of place in your friend’s luxurious home. He settles with his legs slightly spread, back hunched to brace his elbows against the tops of his beskar-clad thighs.

After about thirty minutes, a woman comes down the hall, absentmindedly cleaning a pair of large-framed glasses with the corner of her sweater, a thick, leather-bound book tucked under one arm. She looks as out of place in this hallway as he does—more like a Galactic librarian than a resident of an apartment like this. She puts her glasses back on and stops in her tracks once she sees him.

“Who are you?”

Mando clears his throat. “A friend of Febhana’s.” 

“No you’re not.” 

“Yes, I am--well. A friend of a friend.”

Her eyes narrow quizzically. “I’ve been married to that woman for five years now. I think I would know if she had a Mandalorian as a ‘friend of a friend.’”

As if on cue, Febhana emerges from the beaded curtain suspended over the entrance of her dressing room, barefoot and wearing a blue gown. She pads over to the woman, something bulky tucked under one arm, the other carrying the child in a sleeping bundle. Febhana places him in her wife’s arms delicately. “Lovely, we’re just getting ready for the party. Don’t mind her play-thing,” she tilts her head towards Mando without directly looking at him. “He’s just here for decoration.” 

Mando physically bites his tongue.

Febhana’s wife glances at Mando, before leaning up to gently kiss Febhana. “Alright, I’ll be in the study. Wake me when you get back.”

Febhana cups her wife’s face gently. It’s such an intimate gesture that Mando looks away, feeling as though his presence alone is an interruption. The couple talks quietly for a moment, then her wife exits through the same door she came in from.

“Here is the guard’s uniform. The measurements should be right,” Febhana stands in front of Mando, handing him folded pieces of dark fabric, and then a helm. It’s two halves of a black metal shell meant to fit and tighten over the face of a droid. There’s a thick pane of darkened glass cutting through the middle of the mask, presumably to not disrupt a droid’s sensors but it will render Mando’s absolutely useless. This night just keeps getting better and better.

The whole thing is not something Mando has ever seen before, though he was never one to frequent circles like Febhana’s. The only distinguishable features are symmetrical dips cutting severe cheekbones into the object’s silhouette. Two fixed pieces of gilded metal form a swooping triangle that hovers just over where his nose will be under the helmet’s featureless surface. Looping, thin chains dripping from the decorative structure to partially conceal the mask’s lower half. When he holds it up in the low light of the hallway, their movement creates glinting waves of light. 

All of it is purely flare, for the most part. At least the tailor made plenty room for armor beneath the--as Febhana put it--glorified curtains usually meant to conceal a droid. He heaves a sigh, taking the uniform from her. “This is the only option?”

Febhana shrugs. “Unless you want me and your girl going in by ourselves and trying to lure him out to you--which is certainly an option--yes.”

“She isn’t ‘my girl.’”

“Oh, trust me,” her smile is biting. “I know that.” She tilts her head towards the dressing room. “C’mon, the pretty one is almost done. You can use my room to change.”

When he enters, you’re seated at Febhana’s vanity. All the air is sucked out of his lungs.

The dress is really nothing more than a series of gauze-like drapes that spill from your body and pool onto the floor. The expanse of your back is completely exposed, the dress only resuming to cover you right above the base of your spine. One long piece of fabric serves as the illusion of sleeves, cinched at the swooping neckline by delicate, medallion-like embellishments that rest at the dip of both shoulders. The sleeves’ near-transparent fabric are fixed to ovular gold rings you have on the middle fingers of both hands.

Mando watches the fabric shift over the bend of your arm as you use said finger to swipe a little pigment on your lips. It glistens in the mirror he looks at you through. In that initial moment of deep focus, you have the severe look of a high official’s wife. Utterly untouchable. The most beautiful creature he’s ever witnessed.

His entrance breaks your concentration, you smile up at him, warmly, through the mirror.

“I’m almost done,” your voice breaks him from his stupor. Your other hand dips a small brush into a pot of powder. You dab it under your eyes and then stand, going to a crystalline bar cart and spraying some kind of perfume on your neck. 

Febhana steps into the room behind him. After a moment Mando finds his voice.

“And you said she _isn’t_ supposed to be the honeypot?” It’s hard to keep the pain out of his voice as he says it. At this point it’s like the two of you are actively trying to kill him.

Febhana laughs, and the smile you give him is expansive yet strangely private at the same time. As if you and him were in on some secret, some inside joke. You cross the room and pat him lightly on the shoulder twice, before moving him aside in order to link arms with Febhana.

The two of you leave the room, picking up whatever conversation you were having before Febhana left to give Mando his things. He stands there until his heartbeat steadies, then moves behind the wooden room partition to put the uniform on.

It’s going to be a long night.


	4. songbird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you are forced to go undercover in order to help Mando capture his next quarry, the lionized Tyreus Cavill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: PERIL!!!, violence, alcohol and drug use, jealous/protective mando

You’re most nervous about remembering the proper steps to a waltz. You know, instead of being worried about aiding one of the deadliest bounty hunters in the galaxy on his highest profile mission yet. Because that totally makes sense, right?

At the Estate, you and Febhana were taught dancing in order to entertain the Lord’s guests. Digging up any memories from that period of your life is enough to have the taste bile flood your mouth. You do your best to swallow it down, keeping a cool face for your sake and everyone else’s.

Honestly, you’d trade being afraid of the known over the unknown any day. The anxiety of remembering your time at the Estate was more familiar, something you could deal with, and have been for years now.

Thinking too hard about the severity of the current situation, about how you had absolutely no idea what you were doing, that was the kind of fear you avoid at all possible cost. So you settle for being nervous about a waltz, nothing more and nothing less.

Mando is seated beside the driver. He doesn’t turn back to address you and Febhana directly, instead tilting his head slightly in order to look at the two of you through the rearview mirror. Before the three of you left, he gave you a small listening device that you now have tucked against the edge of the undergarments you have on. The dress is too exposing to hide it anywhere else.

He debriefs you on the specifics of the mission the entire ride there, showing you multiple images of the quarry, plans of action, a blur of different scenarios and how you should react that you have already quickly forgotten in the haze of your building anxiety.

“The main rule is no secondary locations,” he concludes. “We can’t risk either of you being alone with him. It’s too unstable of a situation as is.”

You nod, staring at him through his partial reflection. From the back of your mind there’s a quiet glimmer of endearment, how you’ve never seen him this thorough about a hunt—Mando seems more like a wing-it-and-figure-it-out-from-there kind of guy. You’re not sure if you’re getting special treatment because he doesn’t like involving someone like you in his job or because this quarry is too valuable of a target to botch. The former doesn’t add to your anxiety, so you run with that.

You tear your eyes from the mirror when Febhana digs through her purse and plops a set of papers in your lap. You examine them closely, trying to bring the little details to memory as best you could.

“Is that even a real name?” You ask, face screwed up slightly, pointing where it’s listed on the fake ID.

Febhana cranes her neck over your shoulder, looking down at the papers with you. “Sophste Wilkbail? Sure, sounds like a poet or something. You can play that up.”

From the front seat, Mando gives a sardonic huff of air. It’s such a cruel sound you can practically visualize the scowl he’s put behind it. Febhana rolls her eyes.

“Listen, darling, believability is just about the last thing we need to worry about, right now,” Febhana settles back into her side of the speeder’s velveteen cabin. “Hiding who you are is more important. As soon as we get past the guards it’ll be easy. Just try your best to pretend like this is any other party.”

You neglect to tell her that you have not been to _any_ parties besides the ones at the Estate. Instead, you nod, training your gaze out the front windshield.

The driver lights another cigarette as he pulls the speeder into a line of idling vehicles that border the streets outside the Tagge mansion. You can tell that you’ve arrived by the bright lights and banners flooding from the building’s open face, an intimidating amount of guards tucked away at every discernible outpost. You drum your fingers against your knee to the song you can faintly hear playing from the radio.

Febhana’s gentle hand against your arm breaks you from your reverie. Her words are far more gentle now. “Are you ready?”

You nod. It’s a sharp, curt movement of your head. Steadfast. You’re kind of scared shitless, but determined. She smiles at you, widely, and it’s enough to have you smiling back.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then.”

**

The first thing you are certain of upon entering the Tagge’s mansion is the fact that this isn’t a home. It’s a cathedral. Possibly the biggest, most extravagant place you’ve ever been in.

The entranceway alone is enough to have you clinging to Febhana’s side a little tighter than you had initially intended to. It looks like… it looks like a marble maw, stretched open, fangs bared. You and Febhana follow the tongue-like carpet down the hall in small, measured steps. She takes to ducking her head in greeting to those she recognizes, you 

It only takes a few moments for you to realize the awe you’re feeling is a strange combination of genuine wonder and pure intimidation. You think that’s the point. It doesn’t help with the uneasy feeling that’s situated itself in the cavity of your chest since getting into the car.

“They like to play pretend royalty, here, don’t they?” Febhana mutters under her breath, giving a polite smile to a passing guard as she does. “Stars, you’d think they’d try to lay claim to Naboo itself with a place as decked out as this. Tasteless.”

You huff a laugh as she continues to lead you down the main hall. You try to look as dignified as possible, as if environments like this were an everyday occurrence. It’s difficult to do, but with the assurance of her at your side and Mando a few rigid steps behind you, the anxiety pressing from within your chest is somewhat quelled.

The main dancehall is filled with people. Everything—from the tall curtains to the paintings on the walls—is in cool tones of green and gold, interrupted by great expanses of marble. At the far end of the room are two twisting staircases leading to a platform where the band is playing. The ceiling has some kind of intricate mural you desperately want to examine, but when you try to crane your head back Febhana tugs at your arm slightly, reminding you to play it cool.

You square your shoulders as Mando sidesteps to remain pressed against the walls with the other guard droids, the movement a little too fluid for someone who is supposed to be a robot. You pray everyone is too drunk to notice. They are.

With Mando’s presence lost you sink a little further into your anxiousness as Febhana begins introducing you to a flurry of different people. She delicately places a drink in your hands from a passing server, murmuring a word of encouragement in your ear before moving to the next group. It all passes in a blur, but smiling and graciously dipping your head seems to get you through a lot of the interactions without having to actually pay attention.

You quickly realize she is strategically maneuvering her way towards the stage—or, rather, those who are gathered beneath it. There are a collection of small tables lining the perimeter where people are seated if they are not dancing. Below the stage are three larger tables that overlook the entirety of the ballroom. It’s too crowded from where you’re standing to see any of the occupants.

What you _really_ notice, right after taking in what you can of your surroundings, is that there will be no feasible way for you to pull this off. Not here in the Tagge house at least. Every entrance into the private portions of the house are heavily guarded, cameras everywhere. You do your best to swallow the mounting sense of dread, keeping a smile on your face while Febhana continues to lead you through so many introductions all the names and faces blur together.

You tug at Febhana’s arm slightly between introductions to signal your need to speak with her. She eventually pulls you into the cubby of a towering window after disentangling the two of you from another meaningless conversation.

“Febhana,” you lower your voice and maintain small smile on your face to keep prying eyes and ears disinterested. Better safe than sorry. “There’s no way this is going to work. Not here. I’ve counted at least five guards around every possible entrance.”

“I know, I saw,” Febhana takes a deep breath, eyes wandering out the window. “Let’s just… tough it out. See what happens. I don’t really want to get on the Guild’s bad side, or your friend’s for that matter.”

You wince slightly as the idea that this plan could affect her in any way but nod, trying to swallow your guilt in not fully thinking through how much you were asking of her to help you and Mando out like this. You step out of the little alcove and move your way back to the perimeter of the floor.

From this vantage point, you can see one of Febhana friends wander up to the main tables and hug a seated boy in greeting. The contact leans down and says something in the boy’s ear before turning back to glance at where you are standing.

You’re close enough, now, to realize the table the contact just approached is where the Tagge siblings are sitting. The playboys surrounding them have such a loud presence you’re surprised you didn’t notice them earlier.

They’re all practically kids, at least a year or two younger than you, but they act in that way where they _knew_ they were untouchable. They have lived and breathed an entire lifetime of knowing that they are people who could get away with absolutely anything—and have, more than once. It radiates off of every movement they make, from the way they throw their heads back in obnoxious laughter, to the cruel tilt of their mouths as they speak. Everything about them set off some deep seeded instinct in you to _stay away_.

Scanning their faces, you recognize the quarry almost instantly.

Tyreus Cavill is wearing a crisp black suit and has skin so pale it’s nearly opalescent. His hair is slicked back close to his scalp, the severe nature of his bone structure combined with some of the darkest eyes you’ve ever seen gives him the appearance of a leering jackal. The photos Mando showed you didn’t do it any justice.

Cavill is staring up at the ceiling, tracing the rim of his wineglass with long fingers as the person seated beside him speaks. He looks bored--they all do, a kind of lax slant to their gathered bodies that stands in stark contrast to the tight, aloof postures of most everyone else around them.

You tear your eyes from Cavill as the boy that Febhana’s contact is talking to begins to stand. You look at the new boy evenly from where you’re standing, holding his gaze as confidently as you can, before turning back to where Febhana is standing behind you.

Febhana flashes you a sly look. You can practically see the gears turning in her head as she flicks her eyes in the direction of the Tagge brothers and Cavill. You quickly put two and two together.

Whoever it was that’s approaching you right now is your invite to the table. Possibly the only one you’d be getting all night.

“I’ve got eyes on him,” you murmur to yourself, hoping Mando’s device can pick it up. You glance to where he is positioned against the wall and see him dip his head slightly in response. Feeling a little more confident, you pull your shoulders back and pretend to make conversation with Febhana.

The boy enters your periphery shortly thereafter, standing at your side as he greets Febhana first.

“Febhana,” the boy tucks his head in greeting to her, then turns his gaze to you. His hair is a thick mop of curls, nose slightly twisted in a way that suggests he isn’t too good at fighting. The crooked smile he gives you is warm enough to push off your initial feeling of disquiet concerning his friends. “And who is this?”

“Lucius, this is my old friend, Sopheste Wilkbail,” Febhana introduces you by your fake name, then motions to the boy. “Sopheste, this is Lucius Laycam, his father owns the racetrack we went to earlier.”

“Dreadful business,” Lucius’s eyes glint, keeping his head tucked slightly in that way men do when they want you to feel like you’re the only person in the room. You don’t like the fact that he knows to say something like that, it demonstrates an ability to read you too easily. 

Lucius takes your hand delicately, leaning down to kiss the ridges of your knuckles. He straightens to say his next words directly into your ear, getting unnecessarily close to do so.

“I’d like to treat you to a dance, if you don’t mind,” his voice rumbles. Your eyes flick to the table from over his shoulder. You make brief eye contact with Cavill, who has leveled his head to take a swig straight from the decanter at the center of the table, entirely disregarding the glass already in his hand. Cavill actually looks at you this time, and holds it, albeit briefly. Lucius finishes his proposal as you train your gaze back to the floor, “And then another drink.”

You give him your best smile and nod. It’s just a small dip of your head, but he eagerly pulls you away from Febhana and towards the center of the dance-floor.

Luckily for you, Lucius isn’t a flashy dancer. He’s amicable in a way you weren’t expecting, considering the company he keeps. He reminds you a lot of the village boy you were having a bit of a fling with before you left Am’ile’s planet: slightly empty-headed, but cute, and very enthusiastic about whatever task he’s put to. There’s a certain goofiness to him that pushes away any residual anxiety with the fits of laughter you tumble into as a direct result of his antics.

It’s kind of… exciting. You don’t want to admit it fully, but there’s something thrilling about someone taking so much _interest_ in you. You’ve been so touch-starved that just the feeling of his hand partially cupping your exposed back in enough to send butterflies straight to your stomach. A different kind of anxious butterflies. Good butterflies.

Maker, it’s only been a few months since you left Am’ile’s and you’ve already been reduced to a giddy schoolgirl at the very _brush_ of someone’s hand against your bare skin. You don’t know how Mando does it, you really don’t.

Lucius pulls the two of you to a halt when the band dies down, the singer murmuring something unintelligible into the mic.

“It was a pleasure, Miss Wilkbail,” he steps back, kissing your hand again and bowing. By this point you’ve figured out that his exaggerated, gentlemanly manner is just another shtick of his. You press your lips together to poorly conceal a giggle, giving him your own mock curtsey in turn.

“And you, Mr. Laycam.”

“Now if you’d like to join me, I’m on a mission to get absolutely _plastered_ before these blowhards,” he motions to the others on the dancefloor with a twirl of his finger, “find a way to make this night even more suffocating than it already is.”

“Sounds just about perfect,” you say as you take the arm he offers you. He pulls you toward the table and you try to keep up with his long strides, bunching some of the skirt of your dress in your hand and lifting the fabric to prevent tripping.

Lucius pulls out a seat for you, introducing you to the playboys seated beside him. You’re directly across from Cavill, who is still nursing the table’s decanter, completely disengaged from the conversation occurring between the two friends that are seated on either side of him.

“Are you new to Canto?” The playboy who asks is a Tagge twin, one of the three brothers who are currently seated at the table with you. You can tell by the signature white-blonde hair.

“A friend of mine wanted me to stay with her for a while,” you say, graciously taking the champagne glass that Lucius plucks off a passing server’s tray to offer you.

“Febhana, you sister’s friend,” Lucius clarifies for the Tagge boy.

“The visiting court singer Heresta was telling me about, before?” The Tagge brother directs the question to Lucius, when his friend nods he raises both eyebrows and shoots you a grin.

“I’m still in training,” you clarify with a nervous laugh, finding it easier to talk if your eyes are trained on the glass in your hand. “But yes, that’d be me. The court singer.”

“What did you say?”

Cavill’s voice quiets the conversations of the other playboys almost immediately. The other Tagge brothers glance over but quickly resume a normal volume. The hierarchy of the table becomes very clear, after that.

“I’m training to be a court singer,” you repeat yourself, sliding your head towards the quarry with your best stab at a cool, practiced gaze of utter ambivalence. Cavill’s eyes remain trained on you, utterly serpentine.

 _Ah_. You press your lips together and look down at your hands folded neatly in your lap, initial resolve broken.

“A court singer?” His voice is a low purr. You raise your gaze again. It seems as though once he takes interest in something, most of his buddies do too. A few of them glance away from their conversations to give you a scathing examination. It takes everything within you to not crawl out of your own skin. So much for the ease you felt back on the dancefloor. “Will you sing for us?”

Your cheeks fill with a heat that quickly travels to your chest. _Didn’t expect that._ Maybe you should have.

“I... Not here. The singer the Tagges have hired is so lovely, I’m afraid they far outshine me,” your eyes flick back up to his at your last word, you do your best to mask your burning revulsion as shyness.

“That wasn’t a request.” Cavill’s response is so blunt and immediate you actually flinch a little.

“C’mon Tyreus,” Lucius’s voice is quick to intervene. “Leave her alone, she just got here.”

Cavill blinks slowly, as if his eyelids are too taxing of a weight for him to bear. He hums, leaning back in his seat slightly and stretching his arms out to rest on the backs of the chairs on either side of him.

When it becomes clear he has nothing else to say, the other conversations at the table continue as a normal. As if there were no previous interruption. You gradually return to the sense of ease you’d begun to develop earlier, the feeling is dependent on Cavill’s lack of attention.

Eventually, one of the playboys taps Lucius on the shoulder in passing, quickly murmuring something in his ear before leaving the table to chase down one of the serves for another decanter. Lucius nods, then turns back to you.

“Tyreus wants to extend an invitation to a club we’re going to in an hour or so, if you’d like to join us,” his fingers graze over the peak of your exposed shoulder from where his arm is resting against the back of your seat. For some reason it does not feel as nice as his touch had previously. It’s more intentional, all his playfulness gone. You think that’s why. “Way better than this shit, not so fuckin’ rigid. More private.”

The emphasis he places on those last words is so overt you have to resist an eye-roll. You nod, trying to keep your expression light while straightening slightly in your chair. “Tell him it would be an honor.”

Lucius smiles, the fingers that were tracing the line of your opposite shoulder coming up to brush against the shell of your ear. You blink at the touch, vaguely aware of his face inching closer to yours.

You stand without warning, mumbling something about having to use the bathroom before quickly maneuvering your way around the tables and through the arching marble columns that line the ballroom. You walk as briskly as you can into one of the adjoining hallways, following it down and into the women’s bathroom.

Taking a shuttering breath, you place your hands on your hips and close your eyes. Your brain runs at a mile a minute, trying to figure out how to adapt the plan as Mando communicated it to you, considering the fact that Cavill’s posse was leaving within the hour.

You reach your conclusion quickly. You’re the one with the invite, with the way into the inner circle. No time to try and bring Febhana along with you. _Honeypot it is._

The bathroom door slamming open breaks you from your thoughts. You gasp, hand pressed to your chest as you whip around. There’s a second of blind panic at the decorated droid stiffly stands at the door’s threshold, both fists clenched at its side, before you remember Mando’s disguise.

You open your mouth indignantly to scold him for bursting in like that but he holds a finger up to shush you, entering the bathroom in one long stride, checking under the stalls for people then briskly locking the main door behind him.

He’s furious. It’s the most blatant display from him you think you’ve ever seen.

“I—” Mando grits out. “Your singing. He doesn’t deserve to get that. None of them do. They’re just using it to get to you.”

You blink twice, completely baffled that _that’s_ the first thing that comes out of his mouth.

He makes another frustrated sound, obviously recognizing your shock, and tries to clarify. “They were… _clearly_ making you uncomfortable but they just kept pushing you—you shouldn’t have to just _sit there_ and _take_ that—"

“Yeah, Mando, that’s kind of how flirting works when you’re dealing with a bunch of entitled assholes,” you snap, finally finding your words. Out of any other possible thing he could be angry about and _this_ was it? “I’ll have to play into what they want to get closer to Cavill. Lucius seems sweet, a little overbearing but sweet. It’ll be fine.”

You’re already hovering the fine line between tipsy and just plain tired. All you want is to get home at this point—your feet hurt, the dress is uncomfortable, and, by your book, making conversation with these silver-spoon pricks could be comparable to pulling teeth. You _love_ Febhana, and you could see the fun in a night like this, but you’re also trying to help Mando _do his damn job_ and if he doesn’t start cooperating—

“He doesn’t. Lay. A finger. On you.” There’s an anger in his voice you’ve never encountered before, not while directed at you, at least. It stops any other thoughts from entering your head. He takes a deep, quivering breath to calm himself. It doesn’t work. “If you’re… if you don’t want it. He will not even _look_ at you. The second—I don’t care if it makes a scene I’ll—"

“Mando.” You lay a hand on his chest. He instantly freezes. “I know that. Thank you. I’m a big girl, I can hold my own. It’s okay.” Trying to lighten the mood, you lift your chin up a bit, smiling at him as brightly as you can manage. “Can we please just talk about how we’re gonna pull this off?”

He gives you a tight nod.

“I… I know that you’ve been doing this for a lot longer than I have, which is the understatement of the millennia, but just… hear me out here. Lucius just invited me to go with them to a club—like, right now.” You feel like if you stop talking he won’t listen to what you have to say, so you keep plowing forward. “I know you made a point about no secondary locations. But, if we have the time I think the best plan of action would be for me to split off, go with them to the club and draw him out to you in some way. The security here is so tight, there’s no way I think we could pull this off without it blowing back on Febhana. She’s important to me and I would appreciate if we could get her out of this scot-free.”

You take a breath, glancing up at him to gauge his reaction thus far. When he doesn’t interject, you continue, keeping your hand on his chest as you speak—for some reason you feel like he listens to you better when you do. “Lucius mentioned that things are way more lax there, so I’m thinking that’ll translate to security measures too. I’m sure Febhana is familiar enough wherever they’re going. She can give you enough intel to be able to get an idea of the place on your way over. Then we can go home.”

“I agree.” His reluctance is palpable, but his next words are far more level-headed than you expected. “You’re right, we shouldn’t jeopardize Febhana. Try to get one of them to tell you a specific location and I can meet you there. I just—” he flexes his hands. “I need to get off this planet.”

“I know,” you sigh, giving his chest a reassuring pat before turning away to go back to the line of mirrors stationed above the sinks, checking your makeup. “Me too.”

You turn on the faucet and lean down to drink straight from the tap. You’re stone sober at this point and the water tastes like the best thing you’ve ever had. The headache pushing at the back of your eyes has increased to a dull throb.

Mando’s voice from behind you. “Ladylike.”

You turn off the sink and straighten, rolling your eyes. “Oh _bite me_ ,” the sharpness of your voice is negated by the laugh you have to push through to get the words out. Relieved that the charged air between the two of you has dissipated, you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. “Let’s get this over with, I’m exhausted.”

Mando escorts you back down the dimly lit hall, the low hum of the party forms a gradual crescendo the closer you get to the intricate archway where the hallway breaches the ballroom. He pulls you to a stop with a hand on your forearm before you are able to enter.

Despite the heels you’re wearing, he still has to lean down to speak to you.

“Be careful,” he murmurs. Unexpectedly, he swipes his thumb across your elbow before turning heel and rejoining the other droids against the wall.

It’s such an unnecessary motion you can’t help but freeze, unsure how to process that small display of… well, if you didn’t know any better you’d describe it as intimacy. And not the unique sort of platonic camaraderie you’ve started getting used with him. It feels too much like a stolen gesture for that. Something he’s only done out of a pure disregard for his usual utilitarian ethos. 

You swallow and square your shoulders, putting on the best smile you can before heading back to the Tagge table.

Biting your lip as you sink down onto the seat beside Lucius, you drag the knuckles of a relaxed hand down the length of his arm.

“Could I say goodbye to Febhana before we go?” You say as innocently as possible, still figuring out a way to organically ask where the fuck they were going to be taking you without acting too suspicious.

Lucius’s eyes flick over the table, only a few of the seats have emptied. Cavill is gone already.

“Yeah, that should be fine. Just find me when you’re done.”

You stand back up, stretching your neck to find your friend among the crowd. Quickly spotting Febhana, you navigate your way back through the crowd. Just as she has predicted, the uptight façade of the event is quickly dissolving as glasses empty and bodies inch closer together. The crowd you are now navigating through seems completely different from the one you’d encountered upon first entering the dancehall. The heady breath of the gathered crowd leaves a different crackle of energy over the room—considering Cavill’s circle wants to leave _this_ for something “more exciting” is foreboding. Wherever you end up, you’ll deal.

Reaching Febhana’s side, you gently touch her arm to get her attention. She turns, smiling as she sees you.

“There you are! I thought I’d lost you,” she aligns her inner forearms with the length of yours, gripping you lightly in greeting. Touch was once meant survival for the two of you. Back on the Estate, sometimes the only communication you would be able to engage in for days on end, the smallest of reassurances are sometimes the most solid. Old habits die hard. You reciprocate the motion, grasping the inner portion of her elbows.

You duck your head in the direction of the person she was speaking to in a small apology for interrupting. Leaning in to quietly inform her of the change of plans, you tell her that Mando is going to try to meet you at the club. Febhana keeps a straight face as you do, but there’s a glint of worry in her gaze.

“Alright,” she says cheerfully. “I’ll tell the driver to wait outside. He can pick you up and take you back to the apartment when you’re ready to call it a night. I’ve prepared the guest room for you, the service droid can lead you there.”

“Febhana—” your brow furrows as you pull back, unwilling to take advantage of her kindness more than you already have, let alone her only way home. She interrupts you before you can insist.

“I’m going for drinks with friends after this, I’ll ride with them. Please, darling,” she kisses your cheek. “Good luck, and be safe,” she says softly as she pulls back, still gripping you by both elbows. You squeeze her forearms, giving a curt nod.

“I’ve learned from the best,” you manage a confident smile and disentangle her arms from yours. You tell her you’ll update her over the comlink and turn to rejoin Lucius, who was in the midst of his own farewells.

Febhana leaves as you wait for Lucius to finish his conversation. Mando has long since disappeared from his place at the wall. Taking a deep breath, you keep your shoulders back and your head high. You were completely alone.

**

There are five neat lines of spice on the mirrored platter. The Tagge twin is the one to offer it to you, pushing the surface in your direction before sinking back into the velveteen material of the curved couch.

You are in a private room at the club, one of a series of pod-like structures suspended over the dance-floor. The private pod opens into an expansive piece of curved glass that fills out the rest of its intended, ovular, form. If it weren’t for all the plush carpeting, the liquor and smoke and sultry lighting, it would make a decent observation deck. The room makes you feel like the surrounding world is a fish tank, all those people below you just interesting little creatures to look down at and inspect.

There’s something about the very nature of the space that drips luxury—but it’s a kind far removed from the crisp marble lines of the Tagge mansion. This is all seduction. All contours. All darkness and deep tones of amber, starkly contrasting against the pulsing blue lights of the dance-floor below.

The table before you is cluttered with empty glasses, bottles, as well as a few personal items owned by the boys who had already left to chase down the bodies below: a tuxedo tie here, a watch probably worth more than the Crest itself there—you know, the usual things you abandon in search of a warm mouth.

Lucius and Cavill are sharing a cigarette, the burning cherry one of the brightest sources of light in the room. Everything else is illuminated by low shades of red and orange from the warbling fixtures woven against the solid portion of the wall, which then part to trace the curved edges of the observation window.

The music is subdued at this height, yet the grinding pulse of a guitar still sends vibrations through the floor. Through you. The boys’ cigarette traces patterns between them as they exchange it, back and forth, saying very little in between.

Taking a deep breath, you glance down at the platter on the table. You press your lips together, glancing up at Lucius, then Cavill, who has gradually started to pay more attention to you the further into the night you descend.

Pretending to take another sip of your drink, you push the platter towards Lucius. Trying not to draw too much attention to your refusal, you move a little closer to his body as a potential distraction. Either it works or they didn’t care to begin with. Lucius curves into himself, pressing a finger against his nostril to inhale a line. Cavill does two.

Genuinely, there’s no way they could find any kind of appeal to this. You just can’t fathom it—they barely talk to one another, this group. And when they do they seem just as bored in the act as everyone else is. You’d take a night spent with Mando and the kid over this any day.

The Tagge boy jolts back awake, blearily rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand. The motion is so sudden it startles you, jumping slightly as he pushes away from the table.

“M’gonna go downstairs,” Tagge’s legs wobble like a newborn calf’s might. “Getta girl.” His departure is unceremonious, just like the others had been. You have a feeling the only thing keeping Lucius at this table is you, and the only thing keeping you at this table is Cavill. _Fuck_ doesn’t really cut it.

As the two of them work on what remains on the platter, you carefully shift out of the circular booth, pacing over to the glass wall to look down at the crowd of writhing bodies.

“Have y’ever been to this place before?” Lucius asks after a moment. He stretches over the top of the couch to look down at the crowd with you. As he does, because you think the universe genuinely hates you, you notice Mando’s disguised silhouette—he’s barely concealed by the darkness of the dance-floor’s periphery. You look away as to not draw too much attention to that one spot.

“No. Never. I’ve been cooped up at the conservatory for most of my life,” you say as angle your body towards the couch, crossing your arms and leaning against the wall with one shoulder. Like this, you’re able to keep Mando in the very edges of your periphery.

What you just said was true for your mother, you knew that. Honestly, you’ve gotten through most of the night by just adopting what you remember about her. It was far too natural of a mask to adopt—maybe that should have creeped you out, but the ease of being able to do so is comforting considering the scope of the mission before you.

You take a breath to clear your mind, needing to get ahead of the conversation before either of them can corner you in a story you’re not able to fabricate. You need to give Mando a clue about where the hell you are.

“How far up do you think we are?” You ask, cocking your head slightly, _praying_ that Mando’s comlink can hear your above what you’re sure is a raucous crowd. It works, you see his head jerk up to finally notice the private rooms above him. _Thank the Maker_.

“I dunno,” Lucius turns his head to look where you’re looking. “You afraid of heights or something?”

You give a nonchalant laugh, shaking your head slightly. By the time you look back up to scan the crowd one more time you’ve lost track of Mando. Either he’s disappeared in the mass of bodies or he’d gone completely. You have absolutely no clue, and you don’t want to draw attention by continuing to search for him.

Leveling your gaze back to the two boys, you look them over in a way you hope will draw either’s attention. Both are belligerently intoxicated, the glasses before them long since emptied, the smell of spice thick. It gives Cavill the air of a cat luxuriously stretched in the sun, as if it were just some kind of a natural, comfortable state for him.

As if he can read your thoughts, he speaks.

“Why wouldn’t you sing for us, earlier,” Cavill’s voice alone is enough to make your skin crawl. He ashes the cigarette he was smoking. There’s a loud sound of inhaling from Lucius, whose shadowy form is hunched over the table as he finishes what is left on the platter before him.

“Could you quit it,” Lucius mumbles as he rubs either side of his nose, head thrown back as he sniffs indignantly. “She obviously doesn’t want to.”

“If you were shy earlier, it’s just the three of us now. Completely different,” Cavill says, reaching over to wipe his fingers over the platter’s surface. He rubs his gums with the residue. You expect Lucius to defend you and divert the conversation like he’d done earlier. He doesn’t. Cavill sucks his teeth, leaning back once again. “Sing. I want to hear you.”

“It just feels strange is all,” you bite your lip, voice admittedly a bit brisk in how absent-mindedly it disregards what Cavill is asking. Your turn your gaze back out over the club, mainly to get Cavill’s off you.

You’re worried about Mando, about how long it’s taken him to give you some kind of sign that he’s ready. Maybe he’s waiting until you’re completely alone with Cavill? He pushed that in the car, how this whole thing has to be done as quietly as possible. The problem is that you’ve got absolutely no idea how to get Lucius out of the picture.

“Before there were too many people and now there are too little? What do you want?” Cavill’s words float in the air behind you as you pace to the bar cart, determined to busy your hands by remaking the drink you hadn’t touched since entering the room. “Isn’t that what you’re training for?”

Maybe Mando has been stopped? Your eyes flick to the circular doors partitioning the enclosed room from the catwalk hallway. You remember loudly greeting the guards that were there when the posse first entered the room, giving him the best heads up you could organically muster. Could he take both of them out on his own? Quietly?

“Um, yeah I suppose. It’s just different, there. In conservatory.” Dropping ice into your glass, you hear Cavill scoff. Lucius mumbles something. You bend slightly to get some of the bitters from the cart’s lower shelf.

And an explosion of glass shatters right where your head just was.

You whip around in shock, only to see Cavill already standing, swaying a bit on his feet, dress-shirt partially unbuttoned and messily untucked. It’s almost like some kind of switch went off, transforming him into something utterly unrecognizable.

He’s a fucking mess. Eyes nearly black. The empty decanter from the Tagge mansion in his hand.

“ _In conservatory_ ,” he mocks, his lips pulled upwards in a vicious snarl. “Who the _fuck_ do you think you are?”

Before you can react, the decanter is being flung at you—it misses, again. Shattering on the ground in front of you this time. You press yourself as far as you can against the bar cart, eyes wide. Cavill spits, then wipes his mouth with his hand, looking at you through half-lidded eyes.

“Kneel.”

Horrified, your gaze flicks from Lucius back to the tantrum-throwing, wolf-eyed aristocrat standing in front of you.

“What?” You ask incredulously, browns knitted together in complete confusion.

“I said _kneel_ ,” Cavill jabs his finger to the ground. “Pick that shit up.”

Lucius does a poor job of concealing a pained grimace. Or maybe you’ve grown far too good at reading the tiniest expressions from your masked companion that you’ve become hyper-aware of these kind of things. He gives a small: “Maker, Tyreus.” If it were supposed to be a warning it was a shitty one.

Survival instincts set in immediately. You turn your eyes to the floor and make your breathing as small and quiet as possible. Obediently, you comply. Kneeling on the ground and reaching out a shaking hand to begin plucking the shards from the carpet.

Cavill stalks behind you in an instant, one hand sealing around the back of your neck and pushing your head down to immobilize you. Simultaneously, his other hand wraps around your wrist, twisting your arm back and making your body to fold in on itself, pressing you into the ground.

You can’t help but cry out, the sharp motion forcing you to quickly catch yourself with your free hand. Your palm lands directly in the broken glass. You’d give anything to erase the wet sound it makes from your head forever.

It takes you less than a second to realize he’s trying to force your face into the carpet. Into it. _Fuck_.

“D’you want to tell me, huh?” He’s folds in half to speak directly in your ear, his spit hitting your cheek. He twists your arm further, grinding the hand supporting the rest of your body deeper into the glass. You grit your teeth to prevent another pained sound from escaping. “Wanna tell me who the _fuck_ you think you are? Too good for me, _whore_? Too good for all _this_?”

The doors burst open. Cavill lets go of you in shock, it gives you time to crawl away from him as Mando levels his blaster at the boy. You scrape one of your knees in the process, you don’t notice it over the adrenalin pulsing through you.

Lucius swears loudly, standing.

“Don’t move.” Mando’s words are more of a growl than anything else.

In the pause this creates, you’re able to kick out your leg and take Cavill out from the back of the knees. It’s not graceful or pretty but it works. Cavill falls to the ground and you quickly clamber on top of him, forcing his hands behind his back, keeping him down with a bloodied knee to the spine.

Mando throws you the cuffs, training his blaster back on Lucius as you work on securing the binds around his quarry’s wrists.

“The spice,” Mando barks out the order. Lucius, eyes wide with terror, looks from the bounty hunter, to you, back to the bounty hunter.

“W-What?”

Mando shoots Lucius in the leg. The boy screams a curse, folding into himself in pain. The air smells like burnt flesh and coins. You swallow, looking back down and busying yourself with keeping Cavill still as he struggles against the floor.

“The. Spice.” He repeats. Choking on his sobs, Lucius reaches a shaking hand into his suit jacket’s pocket, throwing the little bag on the floor. Mando stalks over to him, Lucius cowers.

“Listen, man I—I’ll give you anything you want, ok? My father—”

Mando pistol whips him, the force behind it is enough to also slam Lucius’s head into the table as a result, knocking him unconscious. The bounty hunter turns, snatching up the spice on the ground and crossing over to you, kneeling beside Cavill, whose face is pressed into the ground.

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Cavill snarls, the first coherent set of words he’s said since Mando entered. Without reacting, Mando pinches Cavill’s nose shut. You’re confused for a moment, then Cavill opens his lips to either breathe or continue his litany of abuses and Mando takes that opportunity to empty the rest of the spice directly into the quarry’s mouth.

Cavill’s eyes widen, then almost immediately roll back into his skull. He jerks once, then lays still.

It all happens so fast you barely process Mando’s gentle order for you to stand. You do eventually, your legs a bit shaky as you cross back over to the bar cart, holding your palm up to the light in order to puck the largest pieces of glass out before wrapping your wound with a decorative napkin.

When you turn, Mando is pacing the room’s glass perimeter, looking down at the dance-floor to see if anyone noticed the commotion over the pounding music. His takes two brisk strides to cross the room, back to you.

“Are you okay?” He asks, his voice curt and professional. You duck your head in a nod, still pressing the napkins to your bleeding hand. Mando then turns to deal with Lucius’s body, stuffing his mouth with one of the tux ties on the table, binding his wrists. Buying the two of you time, you guess.

You look down at Cavill’s crumpled body. Unconscious, like this, you realize he couldn’t be more than twenty years old. Maybe even nineteen. “They’re all just kids, aren’t they?”

Mando’s sighs, crossing the room again to lean out the open doors to gauge the best way of getting back to the driver. “ _Pel kar’ta_.” Whatever he just called you, it sounds like an accusation “That doesn’t excuse it.”

“No,” you murmur to yourself, gaze still fixed to the boy on the floor. “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

**

The napkins you use on your injured hand manages to somewhat stop the bleeding. You wait in the backseat as Mando and the driver stuff Cavill’s body into the trunk. You manage to pluck the last of the shards out of the meat of your palm once Mando silently slides into the seat beside you.

The driver leans over to the seemingly empty passenger seat, plucking a bundle of swaddled fabric and passing it back to Mando. It’s the child, sleeping deeply.

“Febhana said she had a feeling you’d want to get off planet as fast as possible. She sends her well wishes,” the driver grits out. He pulls the speeder off the roof of the club, quickly maneuvering the vehicle into Canto Bight’s weaving back alleys.

You take a deep breath, leaning your head against the window.

“I’m sorry,” you manage after a few minutes of driving, the words so soft they break slightly as they leave your mouth. “I… I didn’t think it could get that messy. I should have stuck to the plan.”

He says your name softly, it crackles over the speakers of the modulator. You take too much comfort in how he says it, the way it fills the space between the two of you. “Jobs like this are never clean.”

“You said this needed to go quietly,” you turn your head to look at him directly. “That wasn’t quiet.”

“I should have interfered earlier, that was my fault,” his response is immediate. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

You scoff, rolling your eyes and resting your head against the window. “I am _not_ trying to make this about me. I just—I know it was a leap of faith involving me in this. I screwed it up, I want to apologize.”

“I didn’t think you were. I was making a clarification. You shouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

The kid makes a small sound in his sleep, you know he’s stretching and nuzzling into the crook of Mando’s arms without having to look over.

“Okay. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

He says your name again. You shake your head.

“Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen like that, if that’s okay?” You keep your gaze trained out the window, watching the city as it passes a good distraction from the pain pulsing from your hand up your wrist. “I’ll be fine once we get home.”

From your periphery, you see Mando nod.

Arriving at the hangar, you scoop the child in one arm and open the speeder door with a slight wince. You thank the driver and make a beeline for the Crest, busying yourself with tucking the little one in his cradle while Mando deals with the body.

By the time you shed the dress Febhana leant you—now ruined, thanks to that asshole—and quickly shower, you’re starting to catch a second wind of energy. You’re wide awake by the time you pull on a sleep shirt and a soft pair of shorts, catching yourself on the wall as the Crest rumbles into hyperspace.

Settling at your med station, you examine your injured hand under a small portable light, making sure you didn’t miss any pieces of glass due to the dim lighting of the landspeeder’s interior. You hear Mando step behind you.

“Let me see it,” he says. You straighten, looking up at him. Mando is holding a hand out, for yours. He’s back in the clothes he sometimes wears during your long stretches of travel, no armor save for the helmet on his head. His gloves are removed.

The first time he’d done this it had nearly knocked the wind out of you, stopping your words mid-sentence as you entered the cockpit to feed the kid breakfast. He was reclined in the pilot’s seat, the sturdy fingers grasping a rag to oil the pauldron he held in his other hand. You only caught the brief glimmer of a thick beskar ring on his thumb before averting your eyes, stuttering an apology.

At this point, you’ve seen enough of his hands to have memorized every scar and callous. You know it all, from the broken mountains of his knuckles to the small tattoo below the web of his thumb, so weathered by age you still cannot make sense of what it’s supposed to be.

This is different, though. He’s asking to touch you, skin on skin. That’s what makes you pause, looking at him blankly. Mando tries again.

“It’s my fault you got hurt—please, let me take care of you this once.”

There’s something in his voice that sounds incredibly pained, it’s enough to break you from your thoughts. You hesitate, then shift to face him on the crate you’d pulled over to sit on.

You offer him your hand, palm up, in wordless agreement.

He starts his work there, diligently giving it one last look over for glass before slathering it in bacta and firmly wrapping it with gauze. His hands feel just as you thought they would, rough but warm, hesitant at first but firmer once he gains the confidence to really touch you.

Mando then begins to examine your shoulder, delicately asking you to lift your arm, shift it in different directions and tell him when it hurts. You comply, easily succumbing to his little, light touches.

Maker, if Lucius had managed to give you butterflies on the dance-floor this… this couldn’t even be qualified at anything close to that feeling. The flight of birds, more like. A whole flock. A force only rivaled by the quick beat of your pulse.

“I got you something.” If you didn’t know any better you’d think his voice has a certain tinge of shyness to it. “A few days ago. I kept forgetting to give it to you.”

“Do tell,” you manage a casual yawn, then wince when his fingers dig into your scapula. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” he removes his hands from you, turning and walking to the other side of the hull. He rifles through a crate and emerges with what looks like a little box, offering it to you. You balance it in your bandaged hand, recognizing the object the second you see the speakers affixed to either end of it.

A wide grin breaks out over your face as you look up at him. “Is this a radio?”

He nods, plucking the tube of muscle warming agent from the med-kit and spreading it against your shoulder. His gloves are still off, the rough feeling of his hands against you enough to steal all words from your parted lips.

“Thank you,” you manage. “Mando—this is so nice I—”

“It’s nothing,” he says it frankly. You gladly don’t continue your sentence, turning the object over in your hand. “The woman told me it should work just about anywhere. If it loses signal it’ll just play some kind of recorded catalogue.”

You nod, bracing your forearms against your thighs and fiddling with the radio’s controls as he continues to talk, his thumbs working against every part of the joint they can. The feeling is far too easy to give into, you allow yourself to close your eyes as he continues, placing the radio beside you and leaning back to rest your elbows on the table to your back.

“I thought it was the least I could offer you. You seem so happy whenever there’s music,” Mando says as he kneels in front of you, wiping off your injured knee, rubbing away the scabs that were already forming with a disinfectant-soaked towel. He disregards the hiss you give and begins applying the bacta to the scored surface. “Especially tonight, when you were dancing. I didn’t realize you could.”

You laugh, smiling to yourself. “I was most nervous about that, as ridiculous as it sounds.” You muffle a relieved groan at the numb warmth that begins to spread as soon as the bacta sets in. You turn over what you want to ask for a long time before you muster the courage to say it. _Why not?_ “I could teach you.”

A pause. “What?”

“I could teach you to dance, if you want me to,” you open your eyes to look down at the man kneeling before you. His fingers are frozen against the bandage he was in the process of tying off—incorrectly, you might add, but you can fix it later. You can’t help but smile at him. “Put this radio to use.”

He pauses for a moment longer, then shakes his head and goes back to adjusting your bandages. “Don’t mess with me like that, I’ll take back the compliment.”

“Hey! C’mon,” you bite your lip, stretching out your uninjured leg to faux-kick his side. He grabs your foot before it can make contact, gently guiding it back to the floor. “I’m being serious. Gotta blow off some steam before I can sleep.” Heat shoots up to your face, the words leaving your mouth before you can think them through. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“Alright.” Mando stands, crossing his arms over his chest to regard you.

You genuinely don’t believe it. Your smile widens. “Are you serious?”

His head cocks to the side. “If you make a big deal out of it I’ll purposefully step on your toes.”

It’s hard to contain your glee. You push yourself up to your feet, Mando’s arms shooting out in a protective gesture to catch you when you wobble slightly.

“Relax, I’m fine,” you gently push his hands away, walking over to the other side of the hull to place the radio on top of a stack of crates. Fiddling with it for a moment, you find a station playing something slow.

Turning back around, you see that Mando has turned off the med-station’s light, the brightest source of illumination now coming from the radio’s tiny interface behind you. The rest of the hull’s sconces are in night mode, the dull orange glow just enough to see what’s in front of you.

“Okay,” you begin, standing in the middle of the room and motioning Mando towards you. He complies. You hold out both hands. When he doesn’t get it, you press your lips together to suppress a smile, taking them for yourself where they rest limply at his sides. “So, you’d start by approaching your lady and holding her hand up, like this.” You bend your right elbow, your loosely interlocked hand forcing his left arm to do the same.

Mando nods, head bowed to you in observation, a diligent student.

“Then,” you continue, guiding his right hand to the curve of your waist. “You’d place your other hand here, or mid-back, whatever feels most appropriate for the situation.” He doesn’t move his hand. It sends a bit of a thrill through you. You place your left hand on his bicep, looking up at him and grinning. “See? You’re a natural.”

The both of you laugh at that one. His comes out as nothing more than a hoarse release of air from the modulator, but it’s enough to have you absolutely elated.

You start to sway slightly, to the rhythm of the song now playing from the radio’s speakers. Mando picks up the hint, taking up the role of leader while you gladly follow. He’s actually okay—granted, the two of you are just swaying in place, but still.

“I meant that, you know.”

“Hm?” You ask, partially distracted in trying to figure out what move to teach him next. The waltz you and Lucius did would be far too complicated, maybe there would be some kind of way to simplify it…

“What I said earlier. You looked beautiful, tonight,” Mando says, chin still tucked to look down at you. You blink, only actually processing what he’d just said a few seconds after he said it. You purposefully keep your eyes trained to his chest in order to keep your thoughts straight. “I um… I didn’t know how to tell you. Earlier. In the car. But I wanted to.”

“Hate to inform you, but the dress is in tatters and I am way too lazy to put all that makeup on again,” you chuckle, using the side of your foot to nudge him into a bit of a wider stance. He has the resting state of a soldier at attention—fitting, you guess, for a Mandalorian. It’s something so natural about to him that you’ve only really noticed the rigidity of it now.

“No, no I’m not… That’s not what I meant. You look that way always just—tonight, especially.”

“Well, Mando, if I didn’t know any better I’d think you sound a little bashful right now,” you joke, trying to move on as quickly as possible to cover up the fact that you had no idea how to take a compliment. You turn your head a little too quickly to look back down at his feet, ready to instruct him on the next steps, and your forehead collides with him helmet.

It fucking _hurts_.

You wince, cursing slightly under your breath and screwing up your face, trying to laugh off the heat burning in your cheeks and across your chest. “Ow.”

“Fuck, sorry,” Mando mutters, releasing your hands and cupping either sides of your jaw with his hands. His thumbs press along the underside of your chin, tilting your face up towards him as he inspects it for damage. “Are you okay?” 

You close your eyes and nod, swallowing. “Yeah, just surprised me is all—never had to teach a tin can how to dance before, forgot I had to be conscious about the...” one of his thumbs traces a curved line against your chin before he removes his hands from your face. The motion is quick and then gone immediately, just as he had done in the hallways of the Tagge mansion. It has a far more vivid consequence of completely scrambling your thoughts, this time around. “Helmet,” you manage.

After a moment, Mando tilts his head.

“Close your eyes,” his voice is husky, from the modulator or something else you don’t know.

You comply without question, pulse increasing as you feel Mando step away and rummage through something. He returns, standing behind you this time. Fabric is wrapped around your eyes—once, then twice. You reach a hand up to touch it, recognize the slightly rough texture of gauze almost immediately.

There’s some kind of a hissing sound, then the clank of metal being placed on something solid. Then he’s back in front of you.

“Think you can teach me like this?” And it’s his voice. _His voice_. Rough but warm and unobstructed. Just as his hands had been. It takes the wind right out of your lungs.

“Mando,” if you could think of anything else to say, you’d cringe at how breathless you sound. _What are you, a locked-away damsel in distress?_

“When I was younger I was… a bit more lax. Running with the wrong people. I relied on… technicalities, in our code, a little too heavily back then.” You never want to stop hearing his voice. There’s something about the modulator that doesn’t do the light lilt to his words justice, the low but crisp resonance of his voice. “But I’ve… this is new. But okay. Within the rules.”

“Are you—” clearing your throat, you try again. More firm this time. “Are you sure?”

“Just don’t touch my face with your hands,” his voice remains clipped, slightly cautious, but resolved. Typical. “If you—I can put the helm back on, if this makes you uncomfortable.”

“No!” You interject, placing both hands on his chest in reassurance. “No, I… no. I feel honored and happy, really happy, that you’d trust me like this. It means a lot.”

You hear him hum low in his throat, a sound you know he makes sometimes when he nods. He takes your hand, again, the other going back to your waist. “Okay, start over.”

“So,” you begin again, trying your best to run your mouth enough to distract from how… serious this feels. You know it most likely isn’t a huge deal, if he’s willing to do this after one accidental collision—but, well. Still. “When you’re ready, you’ll step forward and I’ll step back. And… uh…” you bite your lip as his hand drifts lower, just an inch, to rest at the small of your back. You look up at him through the blindfold out of habit. “You lead, I follow, simple as that.”

“Simple as that?” His words have a rare, palpable heat to them. You can never be certain, of course, but you’re convinced there’s a small smile behind his question. It’s easier to tell, now.

“Yeah,” your chest feels tight with an emotion so close yet so different from the joy you’re used to feeling. Your smile is uncontainable, if barely visible in the hull’s dim light. “It really is.”

He’s a fast learner, easily taking you in slow, looping circles around the room for the next few songs. The silence between the two of you is comforting.

The longer the radio plays, the deeper you sink into one another, your entwinned movements eventually spiraling back to the center of the space, settling into a gentle, sedentary sway there. You only really notice this as Mando’s hand drifts from your lower back to wrap around the curve of your opposite hip, the length of his sturdy forearm braced against your body. After a beat, you let go of the hand you’re holding onto and wrap both arms loosely around his neck, leaning into him fully.

The two of you don’t acknowledge it, playing it off as an incidental thing, this gradual enclosure of your bodies. The equally quick thrum of your hearts betrays the known secret behind the little game you are playing.

“What did that phrase you use mean, when we talked earlier?” You press the side of your face to Mando’s chest. He props his chin against the crown of your head in welcome response.

The hand previously holding yours moves up your spine in order to gently cradle the back of your neck, gently holding you in place. His thumb rubs gentle arcs against the sensitive line between the corner of your jaw and your earlobe. It feels like a salve in its own right, erasing the feeling of Cavill’s skin pressed against your own.

“What did what mean?” Mando asks innocently enough, as his hand continues its serene movement. It’s the most he’s ever touched you, and you suppose he keeps his tone completely casual to make up for the fact. As if the two of you were conversing from other sides of the room, not entangled in each other. You’re more than willing to play into the charade if it means you can have _this_ , the ability to close your eyes and take in the rumble of his voice against your ear.

“Pel… _pel kar-ta_?” You wince at your gross mispronunciation. “What you called me back there, at the club.”

“Oh—” he seems surprised, like he didn’t even remember saying it. “That’s—that’s Mando’a. It means… well it’s the closest expression to kindness we have.” He keeps rubbing the corner of your jaw with his thumb, it’s maintains a gentle rhythm for your dance. If it could even be considered that, at this point. “A more direct translation would be ‘soft hearted.’ Someone who is unapologetically forgiving towards others, even to those don’t deserve it. An ability to love that clouds greater judgment.”

“I have the feeling it’s not the most complimentary nickname for Mandalorians.”

“No, no it isn’t,” the breath of his laugh ruffles your hair. You can’t help but hide your smile in the warm fabric of his shirt, laughing with him. Mando shifts slightly, curving over you, your cheek against his, rough with a well-developed five o’clock shadow. “But, um. I mean it as a compliment, for you. As stupid as you can get.”

If someone punched you in the gut it wouldn’t have left you this breathless. You try to disguise the euphoric feeling it gives you in humor. You’re worried that if you give too much away he’ll stop touching you. Stop holding you like this. Like you were the one gentle thing he’d succumb to.

“Well, it seems hardly fair that you get to call me a nickname and I get nothing at all,” you huff in playful offense, barely able to keep the smile off your face. “Totally unfair.”

“Give me your best, then.” He’s still smiling, you don’t know how you can tell but you just can. It’s infectious.

“What about… hmm… I dunno—tin can?”

“That one’s taken.”

“Oh, have some lady in waiting I should know about?”

“That’s probably the exact opposite way I’d describe him.”

You laugh. “Bucket head?”

“Not very original.”

“Well,” you give an airy _hmph_. “I’m stumped. You win. Mando it remains.”

Continuing your gentle sway as the music maintains its soft tumble from the radio’s speakers, the two of you go so long without speaking you think the conversation has ended--until:

“Din.” He says the word so softly it wouldn’t have been picked up if he were still speaking through the vocoder.

Your brow furrows. “Sorry, what?”

“Din. Din Djarin. My name. When it’s… when it’s just us, you can use it. If you’d like.”

You cup your hand around the other side of his neck and pull back slightly. His hand automatically lifts to press against your cheek, a gentle refusal in allowing you to move away any further despite the fact that you’re wearing the blindfold. Pure habit, you think.

You blink against the fabric stretched over your eyes, trying to quell your burning desire to do something absolutely disastrous.

So you say his name instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for updates, sneak peaks, and posting times: https://spvce-cowboy.tumblr.com/


	5. the hero's shoulders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: SMUT, fluff, angst, oral sex f-receiving, unprotected PIV sex (don’t do that!!!), cum eating, slight choking, very soft, then rough, then soft again, both parties are not good at communicating
> 
> a/n: i feel so incredibly grateful for all the responses i’ve been seeing from you all--thank you all for being patient & i hope you enjoy !! chapter title inspired by “snow and dirty rain” by richard siken.

“Din.” The word sounds fresh and light coming off your tongue. And there it is, hanging between the two of you, his name. There’s a flurry of movement in the pit of your stomach. You take a breath and push forward. “Din Djarin, I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

His hand quickly lowers to brace over the back of your neck again. He traces the corner of your jaw with his thumb. The song on the radio continues its lament of promises, the female vocalist releasing a breathy devotion that fills the space of the hull.

“I’ve,” he clears his throat. You’ve been around him long enough to recognize he does that when he’s nervous. “I’ve never done that before.”

“Is it against the rules?” You try to hide your surprise with a question, grateful for his hand still pressed against your skin. His need to still touch you, despite the topic, feels like a small reassurance. 

“No, no it isn’t. Technically.”

“Okay,” the word leaves you quietly. At a loss for what to do after that, you stay exactly where you are, face tilted up towards his, lips slightly parted.

And then there are lips pressing against yours. Warm and hesitant at first, but when you begin to kiss him back—a part of you so shocked and thrilled you can barely process that _it’s happening holy shit it’s happening_ —they quickly move against your own with a fervor unlike anything you’d ever been lucky enough to experience.

You break away, catching your breath. “Mando—I—Din, can I—your hair?”

“Yes,” he murmurs, impatiently leaning back down to capture your mouth against his once more. Your fingers eagerly tangle in his hair as his arms seal back around your body to crush you against his chest. It’s longer than you expected, slightly tangled with dried sweat but _soft_. You catch the edge of his bottom lip with your teeth, tugging at it in a small taunt. Din growls something low in his throat, pulling you impossibly closer.

He follows your lead, ever the good student, pressing his tongue into your mouth, tasting you before pulling back and coyly retracing your lips with his own. He’s far better at teasing than you are. Maybe his restraint shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s you _want him_. You’ve chased enough, held back enough. You feel him smile against you, sensing your frustration.

The kiss eventually eases into something slow. Languid. You take your time with each other, until your breathing slows, until it no longer feels like your chest is about to burst.

Din pulls back, holding the back of your neck again as he curves to roll his forehead against yours in a lazy nuzzle. “Need you,” it’s a hoarse whisper. He audibly swallows, just the tips of his fingers tracing the edge where the makeshift blindfold meets the skin of your cheek. “ _Pel kar’ta_. I’ve—” he cuts himself off, unable to continue for a reason you don’t know. “Please.”

You nod without hesitation. Then there is a hand against your ass, the other reaching for the back of your good knee. Once he gets the proper grip, Din lifts you up so your belly presses against his chest. Your squeak of surprise quickly transforms into a giggle as Din kisses you again, your legs immediately wrapping around his torso. You lock your ankles together to keep yourself in place.

Din is now the one to tilt his head back for you, holding you up with both arms as he carefully walks forward. You don’t think you’ve ever been in a situation where you’re the one looking down. It fills you with a feeling of power you aren’t expecting, snaking one of your hands over the crown of his head to grab a fistful of his hair and pulling, pulling his face back even further to deepen the kiss.

He only breaks from you when he stops walking, pressing two more kisses against the length of your neck before loosening his grip slightly on you. Taking the hint, you unwrap your legs from around his waist and allow him to ease you back onto the floor.

You blindly reach out a hand, trying to figure out where he’s carried you. He takes it, gently tugging you forward.

“In here,” he says. “Watch your step.”

It’s his quarters, you can tell by the smell of it alone. Sweat and musk and leather. The oil he uses to care for his armor. In all your months on board, you had only ever set foot inside his bunk to give him the new blanket you bought him. Besides that, all you’d seen of the room was captured in stolen glances when the he left the door cracked open.

His room held the same lingering objectivity of seeing his facial razors in the bathroom, a quiet reminder that he isn’t just a figure from some fearsome legend. Wasn’t just metal and blaster residue. There was something impossibly soft under it all. Defiantly human.

And now you were here. Now he has _led_ you here.

Just the feeling of his hand holding yours in this space, in _his_ space, felt like a new kind of intimacy. Like you were being invited into something with a depth you could not possibly understand. Where your feet would never touch the ground.

Was it all coming a bit fast? Yes. Were you worried about that? Also yes. But then his hands are snaking around your waist again and you couldn’t possibly care less. You fist your hands into the front of his shirt, bringing him back down to you.

His hands continue their drift over your body. You don’t dare interrupt his exploration, savoring the feeling of his skin against yours. Smoothing his hands over the sides of your torso, he slips his fingers under your shirt, pushing the worn fabric up to dance the tips of his fingers over your stomach. They continue up, over your ribs, just _barely_ grazing your skin.

You think he’s teasing you, playing coy, until he breaks your kiss to rest his forehead against yours. His breathing his hard, slightly pained. It feels like he’s withholding something, restrained, trying to talk himself down while tracing looping circles over the skin of your lower ribs.

“We can stop if you need to take it slow,” your eyebrows knit together, the movement only partially visible with the swath of fabric covering your eyes.

“No,” Din nuzzles his forehead against yours. “No I just…”

“You can touch me however you want,” your voice is low, a hoarse whisper. “I’m not fragile. You don’t have to worry about me.”

And he _grabs_ you, crushing your body against his again, palms flat over the length of your bare back. It feels completely different without the barrier of fabric between the two of you. You sink into him again, gladly, as his hands sink down your body again, firm and assured this time. He pushes the waistband of your sleep shorts down a fraction of an inch, definitely teasing you this time.

His fingers trace the lines of the underwear you’re wearing. “What’s is this?”

“Oh, it’s… it’s the only undergarment that worked with the dress Febhana leant me. There would be,” suddenly his lips are scraping against your neck and you let out an unintentional sigh, sinking against him. The next words are difficult to muster, “oh… lines in the fabric, otherwise. Something about…” you give a moan as he nips at your ear. The feeling of his hands sliding against your bare hips alone is enough to render you unintelligible.

And then he retreats. In the moment, it’s a loss so great you can’t help but give a quiet whimper. His mouth seals over yours, briefly, in assurance.

“Give me a second, _pel kar’ta_ ,” his voice is all gravel and honey. Dark liquor and the warmth of a hearth.

You nod, licking yours lips and keeping your back against the wall of the room. You hear him leave the quarters then return, the rustle of fabric tells you he’s doing something with the bunk.

You play with the edge of your nightshirt as you wait for him to finish adjusting the bed, grateful for the blindfold in concealing at least a little bit of the shyness you are certain is plainly evident, regardless if he could see your eyes or not. You try to say your next words as casually as possible, too curious not to ask. “Have you done this before?”

He pauses whatever he’s trying to fix. “What?”

“I just, um… since I was your first kiss I thought maybe…”

The gorgeous sound of his laugh almost makes up for the heat of embarrassment that has quickly spread from your face to your chest. The sound of it is small, but it’s something totally relaxed. You imagine him shaking his head in that amused way he does when his helm is on.

You feel his hands slide around your waist, pulling you against him again in order to steal another kiss, despite the fact that his chest is still shaking slightly with amusement. You eventually can’t help but laugh against his mouth too.

“I’ve… you don’t have to worry about that, gentle girl,” he murmurs. You feel his fingers brushing alongside your cheek. There’s a low growl to his voice that gives a definitive answer to your original question. The dull pulse at your center quickly turns into an indescribable ache.

Din picks you up again, effortlessly placing you back on the edge of his bunk. You immediately recognize the blanket beneath you as one of your own. Your chest fills with a warmth when you realize how he is trying to make you as comfortable as possible. It was one of many small intimacies you would have never expected from the bounty hunter when you first found him.

Up on the bunk like this, the two of you are eye level. You wrap your legs back around him, kissing his neck as you pull his shirt up. He takes the hint, leaning away slightly to pull it off. You’ve stitched up enough of his cuts and bruises to know the territory well—you basically had it memorized at this point—but you’ve never had opportunity to take your time with it.

Your thumbs explore the lines of his abdomen, the light trail of hair leading down...

And _oh_.

Like, you had a feeling it would. There’s something about the domineering attitude of him in his suit that just _radiates_ a kind of confidence of someone who does. But _oh._

You palm the rigid length of him through his pants, gasping into his open mouth when he starts to lift your shirt, the pads of his thumbs brushing against the underside of your breasts. You quickly pull away to take it off, tossing it to the ground and reaching out to pull him back to you. He stops you with a hand at your bicep. You lower your arms slowly.

Taking the hint, you rest your hands on the mattress behind you, biting your lip as you let him look at you. Swallowing, you try to calm your breathing so your chest doesn’t move so rapidly with each inhale. It doesn’t work.

“Maker,” he breathes. “You’re the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” His hands cup your waist as he presses his lips to your shoulder, his next words barely a whisper against your skin. “I’ve waited so long to tell you that.”

And he’s kissing your neck again, the scrape of his unshaven face against your pulse is enough for your eyes to roll back into your skull, a tingling feeling running through the column of your spine.

You grab the back of his head again, forcing his lips back to yours as you recline onto the bed behind you. He follows your lead, smoothly climbing onto the bunk to cover you with his body. The feeling of his bare chest pressed against you is at once grounding and surreal. It lasts for a fleeting moment, until his lips break from yours and begin to retrace what they had started not moments earlier, licking against the pulse in your neck, a gentle nip at the curve of your clavicle, another wet kiss where your heart is beating, all too fast, in your chest.

When his mouth envelopes your nipple, your back arches off the mattress with a gasp. He slides his tongue over its sharp peak, lazily sucking it before moving onto the other.

By the time Din has traced his patient trail down the length of your body, you’re _literally_ panting, lifting your pelvis in desperate search for his hips—for something, _anything_ , to move against. You feel him shift back, his fingers resting on the waistband of your sleep shorts.

“Is this okay?” There’s a tinge of a warbling weakness to his voice. Like his slow process was just as taxing on him as it was for you. _As if, asshole_.

“Please, Din,” you whine. His hands quickly remove the last pieces of clothing off your body, both the shorts and your underwear being rolled down your legs and thrown to the floor with a soft thump. He pauses for a moment, there. Now understanding his process, you let him.

Breathing just as hard as you are, Din fits the curve of his palm to the back of your good knee, pressing another kiss to your calf as he gently bends your knee towards your torso. The stretch of it only adds to the pulsing ache at your center, and you readily mirror his motion with your other leg. He kisses, licks, and nips his way up the length of your leg.

You’re genuinely shaking by the time you feel his lips against the soft space between your inner thigh and your cunt. He laps the skin of that small space as he guides both your legs to hook over his shoulders.

Desperate for contact, you try to shift your pelvis to find his mouth yourself. Din’s hands seal over the backs of your thighs, keeping them spread and immobile. You make a whimpering sound you can’t control. He might have just given a small smile against you. You couldn’t possibly process it if he did.

Din presses the tip of his tongue at your entrance, dragging it over the length of your slit in one fluid motion. To describe what you see behind your eyelids as sparks wouldn’t even begin to describe it. You’re practically incoherent, hands fisted in his hair, using your legs to press down on his back in order to beg him to continue.

Circling your clit with the flat of his tongue, he uses the tips of his fingers to tease your entrance, gathering your wetness at an agonizingly slow pace.

You press your cheek into the pillow—it’s one of yours, some far, detached part of your brain vaguely recognizes, the fabric soft and familiar against your face. Squeezing your eyes shut, you give another moan, the barely coherent plead of “please, Din, _please_ ” leaving your lips without thought.

And he pushes a finger into you, first one and then two. Both are slightly hooked, dragging a devastatingly line of pure pleasure onto your inner wall. The sound it makes is so obscene you nearly come from that alone. The gasp you give is nearly a sob, grinding your cunt against his face to urge him to keep going.

Din fucks his fingers into you as his tongue increases its pace. For seconds or minutes you have no idea, it feels like you’d lost control of the ability to speak hours ago. Without warning, something deep in your stomach pulls painfully tight.

You’re barely able to recognize what’s about to happen before your orgasm _snaps_ through your body. You can’t muffle the strangled sound that leaves you, reflexively trying to close your legs as you ride through it. He keeps them pressed open with both hands, gently lapping at your clit as you shake with what feels like your own muscles twisting around themselves.

He expertly draws the orgasm out, keeping the rhythm of his fingers and his tongue at a steady pace. You’re practically a puddle by the time the last pulses of it go through you, his tongue working at your raw bundle of nerves until you flinch away with a whimper. Din pulls away, gently kissing your inner thigh as he eases your legs back down.

Still panting, you impatiently pull him back up to you, shaky hands messily working to push his pants down. He pulls away for a fraction of a second to pull them off for you, then plants a forearm beside your head so he can hover over you again.

Your hand almost goes to cradle his face but you catch yourself before you can, quickly pushing it back through his hair to push his face back down to you. You take your time, tasting the wetness still coating his chin, dragging your teeth over his bottom lip before resuming the kiss. The moan he gives into your mouth is electric. A flock of birds takes flight in the confines of your ribcage.

Feeling down the length of his body, your fingertips trace over his collection of scars. You learn him by touch alone, relishing in the barely-concealed moan he gives when you rediscover the trail of hair below his bellybutton.

You take his cock in your hand, jerking it off slowly as you adjust your hips to bring him closer to your pussy. It’s messy and impatient, but Din still stutters something unintelligible as you rub the tip of him up the length of your cunt.

“Is this…” he’s breathing so hard it sounds like he’s in physical pain. “Ngh, _fuck_ you’re so wet.”

“Fuck me,” you breath into his ear, hooking your legs around him in order to urge his hips to forward.

He presses his nose into the crook of your neck, easing himself into you as soon as the words leave your mouth. You inhale sharply, relaxing into the near-painful stretch of him inside you. You think you might be cursing, or pleading, it feels too good to keep track of what’s leaving your mouth.

Din steadily increases his pace the longer he’s inside you, every stroke chipping away at some resolve he was attempting to maintain. He seals a hand over the back of your thigh, pressing your leg back to reach somewhere deep inside you. This combined with the small sounds he makes as he fucks you—the sharp inhales, the restrained grunt of an exhale that eventually follows each one—are enough to have another pulsing wave of desire roll through you.

“Harder,” you’re able to gasp before his mouth is slamming against yours again.

Without warning, he flips you onto your stomach. You barely have time to prop yourself up on your knees before he’s snapping his hips back into you, one hand gripping your hip so tightly you think it might bruise, the other reaching around to rub your over-stimulated clit.

“Maker I— _Din_ ,” you’re incoherent, eyes in the back of your skull as his hand releases your hip to snake around your throat, forcing you to crane your head back towards him. Din’s teeth dig into the exposed, tender skin of your neck as he continues his ruthless attack on your clit. The rhythm of his cock pushing into you is unceasing, despite the way he’s twisted your body to accommodate his. You take it.

“Good girl,” he growls in your ear. The praise is taught with desire, razor-sharp. “Such a… _fuck_ —such a good girl. Look so pretty with my cock in you. T—take it so well—”

You come a second time, unable to contain the ragged cry that leaves your already exhausted body. This one picks you up and slams you back down again, hard and fast and unexpected. Din releases his hand from your throat when the height of your orgasm passes. You’re barely able to hold yourself up by your forearms as his hips press into you for a few more hard strokes.

Din pulls out, one hand tightly gripping your hip and the other jerking himself off with your slick. With a low moan, you feel his come spray over your back.

For a moment, there’s only the ragged sound of your joined panting. Din stays kneeling behind you like that for a second. You feel his come begin a slow drip down the concave arch of your spine. And then his tongue, warm and wet, presses against the small of your back, lapping at the length of it. Cleaning you off.

Finishing the job, he collapses against you, forehead rested against the back of your shoulder that’s beginning to ache again.

“Was…” he clears his throat, breathing fast. “Was that okay?”

It was probably the hottest thing you’ve ever experienced and you’re so wrung out you can’t muster anything but a breathy, _I can’t believe that just happened_ , laugh.

“Yeah, Din,” you huff through your giggle. You’re able to reach your arm back to give his thigh a reassuring pat with your bandaged hand. “I’d say a little more than just okay.”

Din joins you in exhausted laughter, kissing your shoulder to stifle the jerk of his chest before easing onto his back on the mattress beside you. You gladly collapse onto your stomach, head still shoved in the pillow below you.

You only rouse when his hand begins to run up and down your back, giving a little hum low in your throat. You turn your head to face him, closing your eyes under your blindfold out of an abundance of caution.

His hand lifts from your back and hesitantly—so, agonizingly hesitantly—brushes the pads of his fingertips against your cheek.

The motion is tiny and brief. But it quiets something within you—a sudden, sacred stillness that comes with an intimacy you’d never felt before. Your breathing goes low and shallow.

Din pulls his hand away, shifting up for a moment to pull one of the blankets he’d taken from your mattress around the two of you. You shift your body to face his as he does, resting your head on a bent arm. He gathers you back in his arms in order to press you tightly against his chest. It feels like a distraction. You readily play into it, even if it is. Especially if it is. You say the first thing that comes to mind, oddly desperate to fill the silence.

“Thank you for bringing this over,” you wiggle into the fabric he’s pulled around you.

“For someone who complains about how cold it is,” he says, propping his chin back at the top of your head. One of his fingernails traces a ticklish line where your hip meets your thigh. “You sure don’t wear a lot to bed, usually I mean.”

You grin against his chest, nipping his collarbone in joking reprimand. “I know you don’t do the whole ‘creature comforts’ thing, but being in a warm bed when it’s cold out is probably the best way to sleep. Highly recommend it.”

“I’ll have to give it a try, then,” he murmurs.

You nestle against, savoring the way his torso feels against yours. His hand continue to trail over your body as you settle, up and down the length of it. There’s something so innocent about the way he touches you, the soft nature of it, that’s hard to wrap your head around.

That isn’t to say he wasn’t gentle or kind. You knew he was more than capable of both of those things. In fact, he _leads_ with kindness. That fact has become increasingly clear the longer you’ve been able to spend time with him. In any situation he can, he will. He’s just unafraid to correct that kindness whenever the recipient proves themselves unworthy. After that, Maker help them.

What you really mean is that his ability to be this gentle remains jarring in terms of where he comes from. What it has taken for him to get here, in this moment, with you. All that bloodshed and loss. When you start to consider that, his capacity for compassion becomes a marvel in its own right.

It’s the first time you’ve really noticed that, or at least thought the whole thing through. There’s the feeling as if something was opening somewhere in your chest. You gladly settle into it, relaxing your body fully as your eyes drift shut.

Din inhales deeply before speaking, voice low but casual.

“I saw your project, in the cockpit.” Your body is fitted so tightly to his that the low tenor of his voice reverberates through your own chest. You can’t help but sink into the sound of it, even with the embarrassed smile that inches its way up your lips. “You had one like it, at Am’ile’s, right?”

“Yeah,” you wrinkle your nose, stifling a yawn. It seems silly now. “It was something we would do at home. It’s like… a house warming gift, where I grew up. They’re supposed to be given to you but I made my own.”

“Have you ever considered going back?”

The question is so unexpected you half think you’ve misheard him. It pushes off the heavy droop to your eyelids a few moments longer, too intrigued not to stay awake longer. “Huh?”

“Have you ever considered going back, to your home planet?”

“I haven’t… really given it much thought,” you confess. “Honestly never really wanted to. I’m lucky enough that I don’t remember being captured, so it’s not like I have any real reason to be avoiding it. With my parents gone I just... I don’t want to accidentally ruin what little memories I have by chasing after them, like that.”

“What do you remember?” As he asks, you feel his fingers trace the shell of your ear. There’s something relaxed about the way he questions you, slightly out of character with the ease in which he continues conversation. Maybe you’re only noticing now, given the circumstances. You decide that you like this version of him, whatever that implies.

You tilt your head up from where you’ve laid in on his chest, as if to look up at him. With the blindfold, it’s more of an act of presentation.

“You don’t have to say,” he clarifies, rubbing your earlobe between his thumb and index finger. “I just like the way you describe things.”

“How’s that?” You ask earnestly.

Din thinks for a moment, toying with your ear as he does so. “When you describe things you do it like you’re trying to get whoever you’re talking to right there in the memory with you. It’s generous.”

Your brow furrows. You think that might have been the best compliment anyone has ever given you, and you’re not exactly sure what to do with that fact.

So you tell him what you remember: the cold nights by the fire, trees so thick with moss and fog that the forest would remain a hazy, dull green color throughout the winter months. There were summer festivals, where your mother would braid your hair with long lengths of ribbons. You and the other kids would make a point to try and jump in the lake with all your traditional clothes on in retaliation for having to dress up in the first place. Your father’s joy was always something loud and boisterous enough to fill an entire room. You had long forgotten your mother’s face, but you knew she was beautiful.

Din’s breathing pattern changes slightly after you say that. You can’t exactly determine from what, but you decide to shift your stories away from families after that.

You tell him how you think you needed your time with Am’ile because you understood her desire to retreat from it all. Her cabin reminded you of the one where you were raised, but there, with her, you were your own person. Living with her was a homecoming in its own right, you think.

A part of you knows that’s why you sought her out after escaping. You were arrested by Republic officers--for good reason, you clarified when Din bristles protectively at the idea of you in cuffs. You’d been caught as a stowaway, caked in blood that clearly wasn’t yours so they clearly weren’t going to hear you out until they got you under control. They took you to a med-bay after you were able to tell them what happened.

One of the officers mentioned serving with a Bardottan woman as they interviewed you. He told you how she’d made a name for herself helping those like you. How she now lived a solitary life in the mountains of some remote planet when it got to be too much.

You think he told you that to give you solace in the fact that there was still a life, even after being reduced to what you were reduced to: a shaking mess sitting on a hospital bed, barely able to stutter out a name for yourself, let alone any details of what happened. It was hard to imagine anything beyond the next few seconds, back then. But something in your brain locked onto that story.

When that soldier came by again to fill out more paperwork, you pressed him more about the healer he told you about. He looked at you strangely, but gave you the information you needed to begin your search for her. You escaped the hospital that night and left, hidden in the cargo of a ship, by that morning.

When you finish, there’s a few moments where you just match your breath to his, unwilling to fill the silence. You’ve never said it all out loud before. Din had stayed quiet the whole time, expect for the occasional squeeze of your shoulder when you plow through the messier details.

Then, there are two fingers pressed to the underside of your chin, tilting your head upwards towards him. He kisses you, long and slow. It feels like he was thanking you, but it’s too weighted of a feeling for it to be just for the stories alone. You accept, graciously, regardless.

And there’s a rapid sound of beeping coming from somewhere within the Crest. Din gives a frustrated grunt, pulling away.

“Sorry. Give me a second, we’re almost at Nevarro,” he speaks as he disentangles himself from you. You quickly wrap yourself up in blankets before the cold air of the cabin has the chance to reach you. There’s the soft sound of his bare feet hitting the ground, a pause while he dresses before opening the door and disappearing into the hull.

You dose until you feel the Crest rumble in descent, the ship jerking sharply once landed. A few minutes later, you hear Din enter the room again, sliding the door shut. 

“Is the kid still asleep?” You speak through your yawn, propping yourself up on your forearm. You hear him drop something that sounds like fabric.

“Out cold. Febhana must have spiked his dinner with something,” he sighs with relief as he settles back beside you, naked. You giggle as you open the blankets for him, to which his face immediately presses into your neck. He scoops you up again, settling your chest against his again.

You take a deep breath before you open your mouth to ask what you know you have to. For some reason you think you’re going to need it.

“Din?”

“Hm?”

“What’s next?”

“Drop the quarries off. Hide out somewhere remote for a bit. Karga might give me more fobs but I’m positive he’ll send us somewhere remote. Wait this out a bit.”

“I um… Didn’t mean in that way. I uh—I mean, what happens now…” you gesture at your entwinned naked bodies. “You know.”

The truth of the matter is that you don’t think you’d be able to keep this casual. You care about him and the kid too much to be able to corner this off as a meaningless fling in your head.

And that’s fucking terrifying. Genuinely fucking terrifying.

You feel him swallow. Something in the air shifts. You brace yourself.

“Could we talk about this in the morning?” He’s using his normal voice. You hadn’t realized the tone switch before, but now—contrasted against the gentle hum of his voice just seconds earlier—it’s jarring. Enough for you to physically stiffen.

“I’d like to get an overview,” you keep it short, steely.

Din waits for a long time before speaking again.

“I’m still figuring that part out,” he finally says. “Things were simpler, before the Mando’ade scattered. Before my covert was destroyed. So I don’t know, anymore. I really don’t.” He swallows. You feel it against your temple. “This life, the dedications that come with… with our faith, there’s so many ways you could be hurt--along with the danger you would be put in, if those I associate knew about you. About this. None of it affords room for relationships in the traditional sense. Not anymore.”

You take three deep breaths. You know because you count them, it’s the only thing that keeps you from screaming or sobbing or both.

“Would have appreciated that little speech beforehand,” you do your best to keep your voice even, but it warbles slightly on your last word. You sit up to distract from the fact, clutching the blanket to your chest, suddenly mortified by your nakedness. To think you’d just spent the past… however long, giving him some longwinded story when all he wanted was to get his dick wet. _Maker, that’s embarrassing._

“I’m sorry—hey! Hey, darling, I’m sorry,” his hand slides over where yours has made a fist in the bedsheets, you snatch it away. He has the balls to keep running his mouth. “I’m just as at a loss for what to do as you are. It happened. We can… we can figure something out. Deal with it later. Please.” 

“Bold of you to call me darling and say some shit like _that_ in the same breath,” you snatch your hand away. You deflect hurt with anger--it was the safest thing to do. The easiest. The most familiar. It hasn’t failed you once. Not once. “Don’t you dare try to sweet-talk me right now, asshole. It’s cheap and something you would _never_ call me and you know that.”

He starts to say something. You ignore him, pushing yourself away from his body and sitting on the edge of the bunk. Your spine curves with exhaustion as you try to will away the tears burning at the corners of your eyes, grateful for the blindfold that wipes them away as soon as they appear.

“Stars,” you scoff. You do a good job keeping the warble out of your voice this time. “You corrected that nursery worker when she mistook you for the kid’s father. Couldn’t even manage _that_ when he’s your damn _foundling_. Why should I be surprised.”

He’s quiet. Because of course he fucking is.

“You know,” you’re babbling. You know you’re just talking to fill the silence but you can’t help it. “I wouldn’t have asked if—I… You don’t… Maker, you shouldn’t have been so kind if you…”

“ _Pel kar’ta_.” His voice goes gravelly in a way you can’t place. You turn your head slightly as he runs his knuckles down the length of your spine. “Please don’t leave.”

“I—” the fire within you is extinguished almost as quickly as it appeared. You’re so _tired_. “Mando, I don’t want this to get complicated either, I just don’t think I should...”

“Don’t call me that anymore. Not when it’s only us.” You flinch with how sharply he corrects you. He seems to register your surprise, his next words more soft. If you didn’t know any better you’d say pleading. “Know that I care for you, deeply. Don’t ever think otherwise. I’m only trying to do what’s best.”

You pause, taking a few deep breaths. You know it would be best to just walk away, curl up in your own bed to lick your wounds. Yet, against all rational judgement, all you want is him. The raw comfort of his body against yours. His distinct kindness, though conditional.

His voice again. It’s a supplication, low and taut with some withheld emotion.

“Just… just this one time, stay. Please.”

Collapsing back into him is one of the easiest things you’ve ever done. Din seals both arms around you, pressing you so tightly against him that the pressure is almost uncomfortable. You bury your head back into the side of his jaw, breathing him in. If it were even possible, he curves further into you, a hand threaded through the hair at the back of your skull keeping your face against him. When you breathe, it feels like a shared act.

Closing your eyes, you’re met with a dreamless sleep.


	6. two suns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: smut, unprotected piv sex (seriously don’t do that), riding, oral f-receiving, communication?! we don’t know her, disturbing imagery, i think that’s it but pls lmk if i missed something 
> 
> a/n: nothin’ for rn ! as always, you can [ follow me on tumblr ](https://spvce-cowboy.tumblr.com/) for updates/previews/etc. enjoy <33

It’s too much of a risk to allow himself to sink fully into the comfort of the moment, so he dozes while you sleep. Though it’s selfish, he’d rather have this restless night than allow you to return to your own bed. 

He just doesn’t know what would be there if he allows his eyes to fully shut, what kind of images he’d be forced to face, and the last thing he wants to do is wake you.

There’s a small, foolish part of him that thinks if he concentrates too hard on the feeling of your body against his like this, something very bad would happen. As if all of this would literally disappear if he were too present, if he thought too hard about you.

He even has this strange image in his head of you evaporating, as if you were a mirage that would vanish as soon as he finally reached it. He has an image in his head of the way the sheets would billow around the emptiness of where your body once was, then quickly crumple in on itself in its fall back against the mattress. It would be a soundless departure, leaving nothing but the ghostly feeling of where your body used to lay by his side.

He thinks that anxiety started when you first said his name. You spoke so softly, _Din_.

At first it was just a repetition of what he had already said. It sounded like you were just rehearsing a word in a foreign language to yourself, like he’d seen you do while studying those little dictionaries you keep buying. It’s been so long since he’s thought of himself as anything but Mandalorian that he was hardly able to process the word himself.

 _Din_. Cautious at first, testing out the sound. The weight of it heavy against your tongue. Then you gained confidence, as he’d seen you do so many times before. And it was _his_ name you were saying. From your tongue, from those precious lips.

The feeling it gave him, hearing it like that, was a feeling he’d spent most of his life training against. He thought he got lucky, when he’d surpassed those turbulent years of his youth without having to fully engage with the tricky emotions most threatening to his oath.

There were always stories of fallen foundlings who sought the affections of another outside of the Creed. Whispered rumors about bunks found empty in the morning, wordlessly exiled friends never seen again. _Hormonal imbalances confused for some mythical conception of companionship_ , their instructors told them. _Natural, but easily fought against._ _That feeling would pass soon enough._

And he believed them. Of course he did. So when he reached those years, he quickly drowned himself in enough violence and meaningless sex to avoid the threat of succumbing to foolish desires. Bodies were bodies. A notch in your belt or your bedpost, didn’t matter either way.

He thought he was safe from the worst of it, he really did.

But you said his name as if it were a word for _hearth_. For _home_. And it made him want to unravel that shoddy piece of fabric from around your eyes and guide your hands to his face. It made him ache for some other world where it could just be _this_ , you and him wrapped up in each other with the kid peacefully sleeping just a few paces away. That alone would be more than enough.

So Din doesn’t sleep. He dozes. And when he knows Karga’s men will be awake and able to unload the quarries from the carbonite chambers, he disentangles himself from you as gently as he can. You give a small whine but resettle regardless. He pulls the blanket up over your bare shoulders. Maybe he takes a moment to stroke your cheekbone, in dazed fascination, with the back of his knuckles. Maybe.

He dresses, body tired in a way he can’t exactly place. It didn’t come from physical exhaustion, he knows that. Something else. Something he doesn’t want to deal with in the moment.

The fresher’s cold blast of water is the only thing that begins to shake him from his mood. The unpleasant feeling is grounding—it reminds him of the skin he lives in, what it has endured, what it is still able to withstand in spite of everything else. All of it.

He downs a cup of caf before heading out to meet Karga. The cantina is sparsely populated, mostly leftovers from the night before, slumped in their respective booths.

The bartender is reading something on a datapad. She glances at Din before looking down at the screen in her hands and typing something. Din leans against the countertop, supporting himself on his forearms as he waits.

It only takes a few moments. He doesn’t have to turn to know it’s Karga approaching, the frustrated pace of his footsteps identifiable enough. The man seats himself on the barstool to the right of where Din stands.

“Mando,” there’s a smile to the man’s booming voice that doesn’t reflect in his eyes. “Quite the performance you made back there.”

Under the helm, Din runs his tongue over his teeth. He doesn’t respond, just waits.

“I have some… news. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but certainly interesting,” he motions to the bartender. Din’s eyes flick from her, back to Karga.

“A bit early for that, isn’t it?” It feels strange to speak through the vocoder again. He tries to push the feeling away.

Karga crinkles his nose, waving Din away and grabbing the cup of spotchka as soon as the woman places it in front of him.

“The Guild is… grateful for how quickly you managed to capture Tyreus Cavill, but there’s been ah—” he clears his throat. “A bit of a hiccup. Nothing you have to worry about. But it does mean that you’ll have plenty of time to find the kid’s people without having to worry about chasing more quarries.”

“What.” Din says it sharply enough that the eavesdropping bartender flinches, nearly dropping the glass she’s drying in her hand.

“Cavill senior is having a bit of a hard time understanding our position as a Guild. He’s of the ‘blood for blood’ variety and he… well,” Karga shakes his head. “We’re working on it. He hasn’t demanded specifics yet but it’s best if you lose his men’s trail, earlier the better. You’ll be fine as long as you don’t stay sedentary. It should be no different, really, than if you were tracing fobs. And you’ll get to find the kid’s people! It’s a good deal, if you think about it.”

Karga’s weak attempts to reassure prove infinitely more irritating. Din closes his eyes briefly to re-center himself. An attempt at a calming breath proves futile.

“There’s a contact, Gor Koresh,” Karga continues. “He might have information about where your people are. Already sent his last known locations to your datapad. I’d say going to Coruscant first will be your best bet, someone might be able to point you in a better direction from there.” Karga downs the last of the spotchka effortlessly. “He’s a bit of a slippery one so I’d suggest you get a move on.”

Din gives a curt nod, pushing off the bar and straightening as Karga speaks.

“My men will follow you back to the Crest to unload. Tell that girl of yours I send my best--and Mando,” he slides on his forearms, ducking his head to look straight into Din’s visor. “For the kid’s sake, don’t stop moving.”

Din rips away from Karga before he starts something he didn’t have the energy to finish.

The kid is waiting for him at the door of the Crest when he returns with Karga’s men. Din wordlessly scoops him up in one arm. Something within him quiets when he feels a small, three-fingered hand wrap around his thumb. The gentle pressure against his glove is calming.

There’s the distinct sound of the shower running when he accompanies Karga’s men to the carbonite chambers. They finish the job, he gets his credits.

Once they’re gone, Din checks his bunk to find it, expectedly, empty.

Nevarro is a familiar planet for you, and it’s not like you’ve ever informed him of your outings. Still, he wishes you would have left him a note or called out to him as you left, just to prevent the brief surge of panic in his gut. He knows you’ve probably just gone out to run errands.

He knows this. But still.

The kid chirps from where Din holds him in the crook of his arm, stretching his little hands towards the swaths of blankets.

“No naps yet, bud,” Din places the kid on the floor in order to gather your things. There’s the small patter of feet toddling behind him, as well as the occasional tug on his pant-leg, as he moves about the tight space.

If he were brave enough, he’d acknowledge the tumbling litany of fearful thoughts roaring at the back of his mind. _If others know what brings you peace, that peace will be ripped away from you before you can even blink. Learn to find solace in this._ _Gentleness is not something to be worshipped, to succumb to. Soft heart. Soft heart. Soft heart_.

He isn’t brave enough. So he doesn’t dare recognize any part of it.

Keeping in motion helps him not to think too much. He steps back into the hull, the blanket and pillows tucked under his arm. He leaves them on your empty bed. Quickly scaling the ladder into the cockpit, he checks the information Karga sent him. He keeps the kid occupied by bouncing him on his beskar-clad thigh as he does. It works surprisingly well.

Din confirms the coordinates and his landing location after scanning the airwaves for any sign of Cavill’s men. The three of you are in the clear for now, but that’s not likely to last much longer.

Heaving a sigh, Din puts the child in his pram and sets out to find you.

The morning sun is high enough that the city is sweltering by the time he reaches the market. There’s a faint breeze that only achieves to move the heat around, the streets remain sparsely populated because of it.

That fact makes it far easier to spot you, conversing with two Devaronian smugglers, taking shelter from the pounding sunlight under the red awning of a disinterested vendor. You’re carrying a bag heavy with supplies on one shoulder, which you occasionally adjust as you try to speak with the men.

You’re using your hands to talk in a way that tells him that the language barrier is more of an issue than you initially anticipated it to be. Din is already bristling with the way one of them looms over you. The sneering expression the smuggler gives his companion while you aren’t looking sends a wave of anger pulsing through him out of pure instinct alone.

Din is by your side right as the Devaronian begins to say something. The hulking smuggler closes his mouth immediately, but his expression remains incredulous, eyes narrowed at Din from where he stands behind you.

You turn your head as soon as the Devaronian shifts his gaze, a stiffness in your shoulders relaxing slightly when you see yourself reflected in that all too familiar T-visor. Your expression remains tight, pissed off even.

“I’ll take it now, please,” your break into Basic is jarring. You’ve shifted your gaze back to the smugglers. The one who was eyeing you previously turns to the vendor, speaking to the frail woman in his native tongue. Din can only make out a few phrases himself, but it seems like you were bartering over some kind of technology.

Din’s hand hovers over the blaster at his hip as the woman reaches under the table, arm dropping back at his side when she places a small piece of Republic tech into your open hand.

It looks like a new comlink. You quickly stuff it into your bag and hand your credits over to the vendor.

“Forgot mine at Febhana’s,” you mumble to yourself or Din, he isn’t exactly sure. He grunts as you turn heel, pointedly refusing eye contact as you scoop the child from the pram. You rest him against your hip as you walk away. Din follows suit, keeping a few paces behind you.

“G’morning stinky,” you rub your nose against the kid’s in greeting. He coos happily, reaching up to tug on your hair—a motion you expertly dodge.

If it weren’t for the Devaronians boring holes into his back, Din would warm at the sight. With the threat of their witness, the image of you and the kid in front of him only serves to wind his anxiety tighter. His words are harsh because of it.

“I thought I made it clear to you that we have to lay low,” he grits out once you’ve put enough distance between the three of you and the marketplace.

“Don’t.” Your voice goes sharp in a way that’s genuinely shocking. You keep your back to him, pace quick and even. “I had that under control.”

“I never thought you didn’t,” he clarifies after a second. Din swallows, his body tense. He doesn’t know how to express how worried he is in public like this. _Cavill has infinite men and infinite supplies to hunt you down?_ Too alarmist, he already wasn’t on your good side. To deliver the news now would just rub salt in the wound. _If I could, I’d bear the weight of the sky itself to keep you safe._ The truth, but he’d already confused you—and himself—enough in trying to express how he feels for you. To try and elaborate any further would just be cruel.

So he settles for silence as the three of you continue the walk.

You give a sigh after a moment, stopping in the middle of the street and turning to face Din, dropping the bag of supplies at your feet as you do. The kid’s ears droop from where you hold him against your hip, sensing the unspoken tension coursing between his caretakers.

“I don’t want to be mad at you anymore,” your eyes are big, brave in their vulnerability. You’re chewing on the inside of your cheek, thinking for a second before your next words leave you in a rush. “What you said last night really hurt me. I’m not gonna pretend I understand all of it, because I don’t. But I.... I know you’re only trying to do what’s best.” The breath you take is quick, sharp. Your shoulders pull back, setting your posture with courage that doesn’t exactly reach your eyes. “I hope you can understand why I lashed out before I took the time to think it through.”

“I do,” Din resists the urge to flex his hands into fists at his side. He wants to reach out to you, to touch your arm or shoulder or cheek in reassurance. But there are the Devaronians to his back. City streets filled with watchful eyes. _Soft heart_. It’s a risk neither of you can afford to take.

You nod, lips pressed together. “Friends?”

Din ducks his head in agreement, shouldering your bag for you. “Friends.”

The smile you give is still a bit tight, but genuine in the relief it communicates. “Cool.”

The two of you walk side by side the rest of the way back to the Crest. The silence is easier this time.

**

It takes another day in hyperspace to reach Coruscant. He spends most of it in the cockpit, tracing signals and rewiring faulty panels, but he keeps the doors open. He’d like the convince himself it was just so he could hear your radio, which you have playing all day, but that’s just an added bonus.

There’s something calming about the noise you and the kid make as you go about your daily tasks. He likes the frustrated huffs you give when you try and fail to get the kid to work through the drills you’ve made for him, or how you turn the radio up when there’s a song you’re particularly enjoying. The child’s constant chattering serves as a reassuring white-noise.

The warmth of it all is enough to transform the general air of the ship in a way you’ve managed to do for months at this point. He doesn’t know why it’s taken him this long to acknowledge that. He allows himself to sink into the comfort it gives him, even if it takes several barriers of steel between him and you to do so.

It is late afternoon on Coruscant by the time he lands the ship in a remote hangar.

Din pushes away from the console and stands. He immediately has to catch himself on the headrest of the pilot’s seat, vision blackening at the edges for a moment before returning to normal.

Furrowing his brow in confusion, he quickly checks his vitals. The graphic flickers to life on his display screen. All normal, so--

Din heaves a sigh. He hasn’t slept for maybe… four days straight? That sounded about right. Since the Crest landed on Canto at least.

He rests his elbow against the pilot’s seat, briefly lifting his helm to his forehead in order to rub his face with his gloved hand in a weak attempt to rouse himself. It doesn’t work.

The informant most likely to know anything about Koresh’s whereabouts was at a law office of some sort, their schedule regimented enough that he could get away with finding them in a few hours’ time. It would be best to catch them right as they were coming into the office anyway, early morning hours usually means less people around. Waiting until morning would be ideal, really.

It’s a long-winded way of justifying a nap.

Din carefully climbs the ladder back down into the hull. You’re in the process of reading something to the child, who sits in your lap as he gnaws on a fruit leather. You glance up as Din passes, giving him a small smile in greeting. He nods in response, then makes his way to his bunk. A familiar, guarded, exchange. Back to basics.

Din allows himself the comfort of stripping down to his under-armor but keeps the helm on, settling onto the bunk with a grunt. The blue darkness is quick to agitate, the day’s frustrations and unsettled tensions quickly tumble into the memory of how this same faint light hit your bare body as you twisted around him. The press of your breasts against his chest. The hiccuping breaths you took when you were about to--

He sharply turns on his side, as if physical movement could push the thought away.

It takes a while for his brain to settle, so tired it’s nearly impossible to rest. He lays as still as possible, counting every inhale and holding before releasing the breath. It nearly works. He’s still so jittery he can’t keep his eyes shut for too long without it feeling as though he were being dropped from an unknown but impossible height.

Sighing, Din sits back up and slides the door of his quarters back open. He isn’t sure how long it has been since he first lay down, but all the lights in the hull have been turned off. The only source of light is the soft glow of a lantern just around the corner of the stacked crates that block off the alcove you’d fashioned.

You’re singing a lullaby. He can only guess by the small sounds of sleepy babbling that you still have the kid with you.

Din can tell it’s something in your native tongue by the foreign, lilting quality of it. Nothing like the siren’s song he knows you’re capable of—it’s far too soft for it to be anything like what he heard you sing to the mountains--but it has a similar circling quality about it that he’s only ever heard from your lips.

It takes the breath out of him. Din sinks to the floor, resting his back against the wall and drawing his knees up to rest his elbows on their caps. He allows his head to droop forward, just for a moment. Just to listen a little longer, to grab onto these moments and store them somewhere quiet and hidden within him.

When the kid finally lets out a snore, you cut yourself off. It’s quiet for a long time, but he doesn’t hear any rustling of fabric that would suggest you getting up to put him back in the pram.

“I love you a lot, lil guy,” it’s a soft whisper. He doesn’t know if he would be able to hear it if it weren’t for his helm. “Your dad does too. He’s weird with the way he shows it sometimes, but he does. I can tell. It’s important you know that.”

Din closes his eyes, leaning his head against the wall between the two of you. He stays like that for a long time, listening as you continue to hum despite the fact that the child is asleep. When the lantern light finally clicks off, he clambers to his feet and retreats back to his bunk.

**

“Din?” It’s your voice, just outside. Panic surges in his chest, the slight warble of your words reminiscent of the night you woke up screaming.

He’s upright and at the door immediately. “Are you okay?”

“I can’t sleep,” your voice is hoarse. “Can I…”

Din slides the door open without hesitation. You already have the blindfold around your eyes, your arms protectively crossed over your stomach in a weak attempt at self-soothing.

Your hand hesitantly stretches out, blindly trying to locate him. He circles your wrist with his large hand, gently pulling you forward to guide your palm against his chest. You follow suit, collapsing against his body, burying your face in his sternum.

It’s a motion filled with such warm familiarity that if he closes his eyes he could almost imagine that the previous night didn’t end in the way it did. Almost as if this were just some long awaited reunion. He wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly against him.

“Hi,” your voice is a small, shy sound against his chest. It’s a greeting, it’s a _let’s forget about all of it, for now. Just for now._ Din lets go of you for a second to pull off his helmet, burying his face in your hair as soon as the thing is off. He breathes you in. He thinks you might be doing the same.

You eventually pull back, press your lips against his. It’s a small, chaste motion. He takes your hand and leads you back to his bunk, hoisting you up onto the mattress by your hips. Now eye-level with one another, Din stands between your open legs to kiss you again.

He doesn’t allow himself to think it through. Not as he leaves to retrieve the same blanket and pillow as he had the previous night. Not as he returns to find you exactly where he’d left, the sweater you were wearing in a crumbled heap on the floor. Not as your hot mouth presses against his as you undress him. Not as he sucks a constellation of bruises over your chest. Not as he stretches you open with his fingers, winding you into a quivering mess of exposed nerves with his tongue and hands alone.

In the haze of your second orgasm, you reach for the ridged tent of his boxers with a moan, legs still shaking from the come-down. He pushes your hand away gently, kissing your temple and tucking you into his side. The two of you tumble into a deep sleep quickly after.

**

There are a few points throughout the night where you wake him. The first is a small gesture, just a hand against the side of his neck, but the feeling is so new that is rouses him from sleep instantly.

Your bare body occasionally shifts away from his as you sleep. Not purposefully, just in small readjustments that usually involve moving your hips away from his, or curling a little further into yourself so that the tops of his thighs loose contact with the warm undersides of yours. Every time you do he wakes up to readjust, promptly curling back around you because he’s too selfish to not hold onto you while he can.

There are a few instances where he wakes up because you’ve turned over and onto him, draping your body over his with a little snore or an incoherent sleep-mumble. He’s never seen someone sleep this deeply, and he’s entranced by every little motion of yours. How you nestle against whatever is closest before giving a content hum once readjusted. How your breathing feels against his skin. How your body radiates enough heat that he had to push some of the blankets off the bed and onto the floor. How _fucking cold_ your feet are.

He likes the weight of you there—against his mattress, against him. 

At around 4am, you rouse him again when you get up to use the bathroom. He pretends to still be asleep when you return, clumsily managing to clamber back onto the mattress while blindfolded. You settle back into his side, pressing the length of your nose against the warmth of his throat, hooking a leg over his hips and flinging your arm across his chest.

Smiling to himself, he closes his eyes and turns his face further away from you, feigning sleep out of curiosity of what you’d do. After a moment, your hand begins to trail across his chest, settling with your palm resting against his sternum as you tilt your head back, tracing a series of kisses along the underside of his jaw. He shifts his head and opens one eye slightly to look at you, the curve of your body illuminated in the bluish darkness of the bunk.

“Din,” your voice is rough with sleep, speaking with your lips barely hovering over his pulse.

You push yourself further upwards, using the hand on his chest as leverage. Then, your lips against his cheekbone. “Din.” It’s a whisper. Husky in his ear. Another kiss, at the corner of his mouth this time. This one lingers. “Din.”

There is no possible way he could keep playing coy. He seizes you in his arms, pulling you onto his chest to straddle his waist. You let out a surprised squeak before he seals his mouth over yours. You can’t contain a giggle, quickly stifling yourself by deepening the kiss.

Din gently cups either side of your neck with his hands, thumbs rubbing either side of your jaw. It’s the most sustained contact he’ll allow himself—only fair, considering what limited access you had to his. It’s… very important to him that you feel like the two of you were on equal footing.

Maybe he isn’t doing a very good job of it, placing all the emphasis in all the wrong places, but he is trying. In the only ways he knows how, he is trying.

He trails his hands down your legs in a languid praise. When his fingers reach the bandages wrapped around your injured knee, his hands immediately go to your hips to lift you off of him and back on the mattress.

“Fuck, ‘m sorry,” he mutters. “I forgot about the—here, lemme—"

“It’s fine,” you kiss him to make him stop talking. It works exceptionally well, he can’t help but chase your lips with his when you pull back to finish your sentence. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“But you shouldn’t—”

“Last time I checked I was the authority figure on the subject,” you tease, prodding him between the ribs with your knuckle in mock chastisement. Your voice goes low. “Lemme prove it to you.”

And he thinks there’s just no way he hasn’t died and been sent to a heaven he certainly doesn’t deserve because your hands are moving down the length of his torso as you kiss him and just the feeling of that alone is enough. It could have only ever been this feeling alone and it would still be more than enough.

Without breaking from you, he wraps an arm around your lower back to keep you flush against him as he uses his other hand to push himself up. Back now pressed against the wall, he lowers you to his lap.

Your hands resume their downward path, palms flat against the skin of his stomach. He tucks both of his own hands in the pits of your knees, holding you exactly where you are as your hands wrap around his cock.

Din moans into your mouth right before you pull away, his neck stretching to chase your lips until you lean too far back for him to reach you. You release him, bringing up your hand just below your chin. The saliva you’ve gathered at the tip of your tongue glistens in the low, blue light of the captain’s quarters as you let it drip onto your hand.

If you weren’t wearing the blindfold, he knows you’d be looking up at him through your eyelashes in that heated way he had seen you do while flirting with that rat-faced boy back at the Tagge mansion. The thought of that alone it enough to have him straining towards you again, desperate to erase the events of that night—for your sake or his, he isn’t exactly sure.

You stop him by placing your hand, now wet with spit, back on his cock. One hard stroke is enough to have his body straining towards you, covering your neck in hard kisses and sharp little bites. He moans into your collarbone as you continue the agonizingly slow pump, your thumb coming up to swipe the head of his dick with every upwards stroke.

Din can feel how hot your cunt is from where you hover over his lap, the plush skin of your thighs pressed against his quads—his muscles, taught with the restraint it takes not to pin you down and fuck you senseless, are ropes of steel compared to how your soft body sinks against his.

That restraint crumbles when you lean forward to try and kiss him as you continue jacking him off, pressing your tits against his chest, breathing against his cheek as you blindly try to find his lips again. He surges forward to meet you, mouths clashing together in a heated reunion.

Wordlessly, Din removes his hands from your knees, sliding them up your thighs and grabbing onto your hips. He begins to roll you back onto the bed beneath him, but you place your free hand on his bicep, halting him before he can.

You pull away, slightly shoving him to lean back against the wall as you drag your tongue over your lips, plush from sleep and the force of the kiss. Maddeningly, you finished the motion by biting the corner of your bottom lip, right as you lift yourself up from his lap to tease the head of his cock against your entrance.

He can tell you’re still sore from the small sounds you make as you sink onto him, but his ability to acknowledge that quickly flies out the window because _Maker_ you’re so fucking tight it’s nearly painful. He’s about to urge you off him, to insist on foreplay so he doesn’t hurt you--

And he’s left in an absolute daze because he realizes that _you want it like this_. Because with the first few rolls of your hips you’re already soaking his cock, mumbling incoherent phrases between heady little moans as you arch your spine. You throw your head back as you do, exposing the delicate expanse of your neck that he’d spend the rest of his living days marking if he could.

Din presses up into you to meet each thrust of your hips, the arm he had braced around you shifting up to press against the curve of your spine, coaxing your chest closer to his face. He sucks a nipple into his mouth, the hand that was resting against your leg moving up to press against your lower stomach.

His hands are so big against your body that his thumb is able to reach your clit from where his palm rests. Your hips stutter slightly at the new sensation and it takes far too much self-restraint to resist pinning you to the bed when he feels how you clench around him. He’s able to thrust into you a few times before you continue to ride him, one hand tangled in his hair, the other braced against his bicep.

You slam your hand against the wall for leverage, grinding down on him with a series of sharp gasps, rapidly increasing in pitch as his thumb steadily rubs circles onto your clit.

It’s quick but heated. He lowers the hand on your back and returns it to your hip in encouragement for you to keep going, burying his face in the crook of your neck. With the pace you’ve set, he feels his orgasm drawing up in his stomach far faster than he’d anticipated.

“F- _fuck_ ,” he’s able to choke out. “I’m—where should I—”

“Inside,” you pant. You’re holding your breath in that way you do when you’re about to come. “’s safe. Please, oh M—Din, _please_.”

Your words are more than enough to have him tumbling over the edge. It’s white-hot, then nearly blinding as he feels you quickly follow him, your hips jerking under his thumb. When he resurfaces, cock still pulsing inside you, he realizes he’s bitten down on the patch of skin where your shoulder meets your neck.

Din lets go of you immediately, mumbling an apology and kissing the salty spot before he settles his forehead against where the indentations of his teeth dug scores into the delicate flesh. You’ve already assumed the same position on his opposite shoulder, breathing hard. He holds you against him with both arms wrapped around your lower back.

The two of you stay like that, catching your breath, for what feels a long time. You eventually shift back, messily kissing him. Din grunts, placing a hand against the side of your head as his lips slide against yours.

Muscles still shaky, he lifts you off his lap and guides you back down on the mattress. Grunting, he rolls onto his side to grab his discarded shirt, using it to wipe you off and then himself. You give a sleepy moan as he does, immediately rolling onto your side and draping yourself over him again when he settles back down on the mattress.

“ _Pel kar’ta_ —” he begins a sentence he doesn’t know the ending of. You shake your head against his chest.

“Go to bed, Din Djarin,” you murmur, pressing a soft kiss against his shoulder. There’s an unabashed intimacy in how you say it, already half-sleep, all potential barriers forgotten in the haze and heaviness of your eyes. 

**

In a dream, a formless shape stands in the far distance.

It is supposed to be the skinless figure. He knows this because he is still kneeling, still crouched in the midst of some kind of red fog that is at once a whipping wind and a still solace. It depends on how hard he focuses on it.

He can’t look up at it, not where it stands. There are two blazing lights to the distant shape’s back, so strong it forces him to keep his eyes to the ground. But he knows it is there. He knows it is supposed to be the skinless figure, but it isn’t. She never approaches.

He vomits anyway. It’s leeches, this time. A thick, black mass of them, writhing in the hands— _his_ hands—that catch them. He watches as they fall.

**

When Din opens his eyes again, it is morning.

It is morning and you are gone. So are most of your things. Your bed is stripped, its contents folded in neat piles. You leave the medkit and a note. He doesn’t read it.


	7. an old friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: the time jump here includes all events from season two, alcohol, talk of vaccines/lung issues, cold/freezing weather (i started writing this chapter so long ago i swear i didn’t mean for it to be so topical), non-consensual advances, mention of stalking
> 
> a/n: we are coming up on the last few chapters of this fic ! both exciting and a little sad. more gushing abt how grateful i am to come--but thank you all so much for your lovely comments as well as your incredible patience <3

It takes a year to fully think of this planet as home. Things start to come easier once you do.

When you first arrived you were struck by its name. _Valeria_. There were only rumors about where the moniker came from, often chanted in the form of drinking songs at the local bar. Your favorite is the tale of some sea-weathered adventurer naming it after a siren he swore he saw on a distant, rocky shore. The planet certainly has the aura of something alluring yet monstrous in its capacity for brutality. _Valeria_.

You think you like that story so much because names like that are usually reserved for… well, hospitable planets.

That’s not to say Valeria wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful. The thick padding of snow on the ground bounced the dusky-rose light of its suns gorgeously in the summer, and the black pines—large enough to rival some of the most impressive buildings on Hosnian Prime—always cut gorgeous shapes into the horizon. The freezing cold temperatures only got deadly during the storm season and the wolf-like creatures only resurface to pluck someone off every few months or so, only when they got particularly hungry.

The population was surprisingly large for a planet so difficult to find. The town closest to your house was almost large enough to be considered a small city. Granted it was also the _only_ populated area on the entire planet--save for the mining outposts and the handful of disgruntled hunters who chose to retreat into the towering pines like you have.

Valeria first started getting inhabited for its fur trapping in the early days of the Old Republic. Initially lucrative due to the snowy canopies formerly rich with unassuming animals, it quickly got a bit of a… reputation as one of many lawless frontiers barely within the reach of the Outer Rim.

Then there was a second population boom, still steadily on the rise, when the Empire started mineral mines deep within its complicated system of caves. The New Republic put a few embargos on fur trading, but kept the mining the same.

There’s a strange mix of both crowds now. It makes for some pretty interesting bar fights, you must admit.

What you really mean by the whole “hospitable planet” thing is that there are some planets that are so untouched, the audacity of organized life is nearly laughable.

Or, at least, that’s what you think to yourself when your headlights illuminate the miserable looking Republic soldiers standing guard at the gates of town: scarves pulled up to their noses, the fur-trimmed edges of their coats packed with pure frost.

They still greet you by name, albeit muffled by layers of wool, ducking their heads as you pass.

Luckily for you, healers of any sort were usually welcomed in most communities, especially remote holdings like this. When you first arrived, the frazzled Ugnaught in charge of the poorly supplied medical facility negotiated all terms of your residency on Valeria within hours of your boots touching snow. At first you thought it was a small miracle, but as soon as you set foot inside their makeshift hospital you realized you had your work cut out for you.

That was good, though. You needed to just put your head down and keep your hands busy. And you did, tirelessly, for nearly eight months straight. It was obvious you were escaping from something. Luckily this crowd wasn’t exactly one to care. You think that everyone here was running from something.

So you did what you always did. Pulled your shoulders back, head held high, and endured.

After every surface was scraped clean, all the files organized, every patient given full evaluations, you started feeling better. Just as long as you kept your hands busy.

You still thought about him. A lot. Either consciously or in the little, insignificant things: the smell of the bone broth being served in the local tavern, the glimmer of metal caught in the corner of your vision, the particularly hard-set expressions of certain patients. On particularly bad days, the only way you could fall asleep was by imagining that he was in the bed, right beside you. Just a touch away.

But it was easier, now. It got easier every day.

You climb out of your speeder as soon as you made it through the town’s towering gates. The sky is pitch black despite the reading on your watch being the mid-afternoon. The last vestiges of winter were slowly but surely peeling away, but the last to come was always daylight. Maker, you missed it.

The orange streetlamps light your path as you make your way towards the small building nestled under the Republic’s headquarters. The hospital—maybe better described as a modest clinic—already had a line of miners out the door, arms crossed and head bowed against the wind.

There is a new shipment of vaccinations for the miners that you are helping with today, and you had to stock up on supplies before the next storm passed through. From the looks of it, this was about to be a very long shift.

The miners recognize your bundled-up form almost immediately, their gruff chatter lowering considerably in volume. You greet them warmly as you push past into the clinic’s main floor.

“Hi Idra!” You call out as you unwrap yourself from your layers, removing your head and facial covering with a relieved sigh, grateful for how the fresh air hits your lungs. “Sorry I’m late, there was a blockage on the main road.”

You hear a grunt from the Ugnaught from behind one of the partitions. She waddles into view, hands busy with flipping through a thick stack of papers attached to a clipboard.

“We must get this done quickly, girl,” she mumbles. “The--”

“The blizzard? Yes, I know, I got your message, Idra,” you say it with a smile. She doesn’t respond, save for a small huff as she tucks the clipboard under her arm. She motions the first of the miners into the small room. You get to work.

The miners are all relatively similar, usually ex-cons of some sort, burly builds, lacking hygiene. The buzz over the storm that was set to whip through town the next day seemed to enliven just about everyone. You know it is mostly because it would mean a few days off for nearly every worker until it passed, but there is something endearing about how this scraggly, world-weathered group got as giddy as little kids about the prospect of snow.

You and Idra take up opposite ends of the med-bay to administer the vaccines. Your stations were sectioned off by a series of room partitions for privacy when the clinic was operating under its normal hours. The maze-like setup of suspended sheets renders all the miners filing in into a series of near formless shadows that ghost against the thin fabric before they entered.

A dark shape passing over the partition signals your next patient’s arrival. It’s tall, broad-shouldered, and there’s the shape of some kind of rifle strapped to his back. You brace yourself for who you know it about to enter.

Roserei is the quintessential miner “type:” loud and large enough that navigating enclosed spaces is a bit of a problem, covered in tattoos and grease from the machines he operates to crack open the core of Valeria herself. The rifle he carries is a prize from a hunting trip, where he claimed to have killed a record number of wolves. He carves his kill-count on its barrel.

That’s all to say he’s one cocky sonofabitch, with the facial scars to prove it. The one that cuts across his nose, freshly healed with soft, angry looking, skin, is the newest of the batch.

“I’m fighting in the boxing matches tonight,” he informs you cheekily as he sits down, leaning his rifle against the stool. He rolls his head in a stretch. The flexing, black whorls of ink on his neck stand in stark contrast to his opalescent skin.

“Boxing?” You turn from your tray of supplies to address him directly, exasperated. The inoculators the Republic sent were dated. The heavy, blaster-like things are more characteristic of crude Imperial supplies. It takes a lot of fiddling between patients to load them properly. “After your nose _just_ healed up?”

He frowns, giving an exaggerated shrug right as you push the sleeve of his shirt up over his shoulder. You shake your head and go back to preparing your materials, a little too used to the stubborn type.

“Thought I should extend a personal invitation, if this’ll be the last time you’re comin’ into town until the weather clears,” his eyes gleam with mischief as you clean the area on his bicep. Most of the time his blatant flirting was endearing, but you needed a fresh cup of caf a little too much to play into it today. You fiddle with the inoculator’s prod as he continues, making sure you’ve got the proper dosage loaded. “Unless you wanna hunker down with me, that is. You know I need someone to warm my bed.”

“Inappropriate,” you shoot him a tired look as you squeeze the trigger of the inoculator. Trying to suppress an eye-roll at the over-exaggerated yelp of pain he gives, you quickly press a clean wad of gauze against the puncture mark.

“Think you owe me a drink after that, beauty,” Roserei continues with a wince as you wrap a bandage tightly around the gauze.

You laugh, giving him a small pat on the back before motioning him out the door. “It’ll stop bleeding in an hour. Take the bandage off then, but keep it covered.”

“Yes, doctor,” he chimes as he heads out, shouldering his gun before throwing you a small wave in departure.

You go back to your materials to start again, working until the last miner filters through. After, Idra and you drink caf in silence before you help her pack up the clinic for the blizzard. She leaves before you do, mumbling a curt farewell.

Wrapping yourself back up in your layers, you make the short walk across the main road to the supply store.

Ever since you woke up this morning something has felt… _off_. You weren’t exactly sure how to place it. It was like your body was steeling itself for something. Judging by your frustratingly lethargic brain and jittery hands, you’ve probably just had too much caf.

You sniff, taking a second to yourself. The cold air is invigorating, shocking some energy into you in a way the bitter taste of your drink hadn’t been able to.

The snow on the ground reflects the orange light of the street back into the thick, immovable storm clouds above. Beyond the walled town, small points of lights glow from the gig-lamps strung along the main roads to the mines. They’re only able to trace a suggestion of the mountain’s face.

Other than that, the darkness is a heavy blanket, obstructing all else from sight. You’d have to close your eyes and imagine the jagged peaks of the mountains just above the towering walls that surround the town, thickly furred with the dark shapes of snow-dusted foliage.

Sometimes you catch yourself in the middle of doing something that you used to only observe in Am’ile. Like that gentle, coo-like tone her voice would take when admiring how the suns set against the uneven horizon. You always admired them with her, but never with the same quiet adoration as she did.

After the buzz of heartbreak quieted in your chest, you found yourself achingly homesick for her quiet cottage again. A longing to return to her motherly hands, knotted with age but kind and soft all the same.

Sometimes, when you’d wake from your nightmares or go into those long moments of empty staring, she’d coax you to sit down on your bed and lay your head in her lap. She’d pet the top of your head until your breathing evened. There was something so simple about it, so gentle.

You wish you could have given Am’ile a better goodbye, or found some way to properly thank her. The feeling that thought gives you is where the homesickness started and where it stays, even now.

Some deeper part of you thinks that those memories—even the ones with Din—will eventually fade into something you could look fondly upon, to take comfort in. She told you as much. You hope she’s right.

You have to take a breath after that thought. Closing your eyes briefly, you shake your head before pushing forward.

The supply store is a far more welcoming environment, warm from the crackling propane heaters positioned in various places among the stacks.

The Republic officer who runs the shop is named Niccha. He’s a waif of a man, constantly sick with something, but sweet. There’s a bubbliness about him that’s rare to find on Valeria, you think that’s why he’s the closest friend you have here.

Despite the fact that you have to remove several layers to prevent yourself from sweating, Niccha constantly blows hot air into his hands before rubbing them together. He greets you in the middle of the motion, giving a little wave before going back to flipping through some kind of worn, leather-bound catalogue.

The two of you initially bonded over your love of old-school books instead of the more common—and admittedly more efficient—datapad. When you first arrived to Valeria you had nervously asked him if they had any, and the way his eyes lit up made you immediately feel safe in his presence.

“What’s that?” You ask as you sort through the pillar candles stacked on the shelves closest to the door. All the storm supplies had been pushed up front with the latest cargo ship, you’d have to move further into the stacks for rations.

“Old diary I found in the records room,” he mumbles, scrunching his nose and carding his hand back through his greasy, pale-orange curls. “It’s hard to make out the guy’s handwriting, but it must be pre-Imperial. Bunch of logs about hunting missions, a few drawings too—you’d never _believe_ the stuff they found out there, stars.”

You laugh, shaking your head to yourself as you pluck a pack of candles to put in your bag. “Has anyone ever told you you’d make a far better scientist than a store clerk?”

“But what about _adventure_ , doc?” You don’t have to look up to know he’s rolling his eyes, voice dripping with sarcasm. The page crackles as he turns it. “Could never save up enough for school anyway.”

“Well, let me know when the book is published,” you chime as venture further into the shelves. “I want my claim to fame, you know. It’ll be a major flex.”

You smile to yourself when you hear the tinkle of his laugh, tracing the tips of your fingers over the labels on the prepackaged rations as if that could help you see better under the flickering, florescent lights.

When you return to the front of the store with an armload of supplies, Niccha helps you stack everything on the counter before checking you out.

“Heard something interesting this morning,” he informs you as he hoists the last of your groceries up onto the counter. He’s, as usual, both completely disinterested and yet infinitely knowledgeable about the town gossip. “Apparently a Mandalorian was spotted at one of the outposts last night—not that phony shit either, the real deal. The whole place has been buzzing about it, it’s maddening.”

The words hit like a physical blow. Your breath halts in your chest. Swallowing, you try to keep it casual.

“Really?” Your attempt at nonchalance seems convincing enough, it helps that you’re able to keep your hands busy with helping him stack the rations into your backpack. The rest is put in two crates to take home. “How did he manage to get all the way out here?”

“Some ship, looks far too new to be trusted around most of those scrap-hungry boys in the hanger if you ask me.”

“He’s alone?” Your heart is already sinking in your chest, the stiff posture of your shoulders deflating. 

“Dunno, I’d think so,” he shrugs. “You know how types are around here.”

You nod, trying to maintain composure as your mind races. A few weeks after you first arrived, there was a newcomer who had a beat up, beskar chest plate. It was enough to make you feel physically sick whenever you saw him, especially when he boasted about the battle he won it in. Maybe it was just another situation like that, and the rumor-mill misconstrued what they saw. You’re convinced that’s it—not like any of them have seen an actual Mandalorian before.

“I can help take this to your speeder,” Niccha’s voice becomes strained momentarily as he picks up one of the crates. You swallow, nodding in thanks as you do the same. He’s either oblivious to your reaction to his news or pretending not to recognize it. “You excited about the fights tonight?”

“Don’t know if I’m going,” you mutter absentmindedly. It’s hard to keep your thoughts from spiraling, a consistent litany of _there’s no way, there’s no possible way_ pushing all else to the very back of your mind. You never told him about where you came from before Valeria. Past lives weren’t really a subject of conversation most people took kindly too here, that benefitted you well.

“Huh, really?” Niccha gives a low whistle, using his elbow to press the datapad next to the door. It opens with a loud _whoosh_ , a gust of freezing cold air quickly follows. “No medic is gonna be interesting.”

“What do you mean?” You turn your head to actually look at him, attention piqued.

“Idra refuses to go to them, guess we all just thought you’d be filling in like you’ve always done,” he shrugs, though inhibited by the weight of both bags. “It’ll be fine though, just interesting. Like it was before you showed up.”

You sigh. It’s gonna be a long night. “No, no. Seems like I’ll be there.”

**

The smell hits you as soon as you descend the stairs. Fifty or so bodies packed into a space, all de-thawing at once--if you weren’t so used to it at this point, it would be enough to make your stomach curdle. 

The tavern is more of a glorified basement. The center of the room is squared off by a series of poles and ropes, dimly lit by a strings of strange, sodium lights strung above it. It made the farthest corners of the space nearly pitch-black, but the yellow-green glow against everyone’s skin looked... interesting enough.

The floor is a ragged cement, save for the dusting of dirt where the fighting ring is. They only did that when you practically begged them to, tired of having to reset far too many shoulders and broken ribs. You can hear the fight already in progress as soon as you step into the crowded room, unable to see over the impressive heights and broad shoulders of the attendees.

Niccha weaves ahead of you, disappearing into the crowd to enjoy the fights. He liked getting up close and you found the press of bodies made you far too anxious. You tended to hang around the bar instead—besides, it made a far better work surface once one of the fighters were inevitably sent your way.

The chatter of the crowd occasionally rises in volume, in accordance to the progression of the brawl taking place. You get a few greetings as you weave your way to the other side of the room, to which you smile and wave back.

Placing your medkit on the countertop, you settle on one of the barstools. It’s gotten so hot that you’re just in your tank top and cargo pants, coat draped over your seat before you sat down. You and the bartender launch into a semi-shouting small talk as he serves you another drink.

Roserei is your first patient of the night. For some reason that doesn’t surprise you the slightest. He grins as he sits down, bloody teeth looking black in the green light.

“Glad to see you made it, beauty,” he rumbles as he sits down. He has a cut running through his brow, but other than that seems fine.

The work, as well as the conversation, is easy and fast. You think you see the glimmer of metal out of the corner of your eye. You’re better enough to know now that it’s just nothing, so you keep your eyes trained on Roserei, leaning towards him to dab the blood away. You have him patched up and checked over by the time the bell for the next fight sounds.

He grins and pats you on the back in thanks—the force enough of it to physically jolt you--before disappearing back into the crowd. There’s nothing too bad about the fighters you see after that—just a few scrapes, a sore rib or two. Easy work. It’s relieving.

Niccha sits beside you after a few more rounds, shirt unbuttoned against the heat, hair messy, grinning wide. If it weren’t for the light, you know that his face would be flushed in a brilliant stripe of pink over his nose and cheeks.

“I think Laurli and I are going to spent the storm together,” he announces happily, nodding to a miner at the edge of the crowd. She looks a little more composed, already in deep conversation with someone at her side ever since emerging from the bathroom a few beats after Niccha had.

“What about Jax?” You ask casually, eyeing the crowd for your friend’s previous fling.

“Likes to cuddle too much,” Niccha wrinkles his nose. “I like ‘em a little mean, you know that.”

You roll your eyes, downing the rest of your drink. It’s cold as it hits the back of your throat, then slowly settles into a warm buzz in your molars.

“I think you’re the biggest slut I’ve ever met,” you speak directly into his ear so he can hear you, nudging him with your shoulder. He throws his head back in a laugh.

“And what of it?” He pushes his hair back with a shrug. “Just about the only fun you can get out here.”

He makes a good point.

You lean back against the bar’s countertop, scanning the crowd for any incoming patients. Something about events like this make you feel a bit like a mother-hen, fussing over inconsequential scrapes and bruises. Maybe you just never really understood the appeal of watching people beat each other up for fun—you think it’s that. It’s definitely that.

“Hey,” Niccha nudges your knee with the side of his, jolting you from your thoughts. “I was thinking, that journal I found is pretty interesting. Like, totally more detailed than anything the Republic has logged here.”

You glance at him, curious as to where he’s taking this.

“I think, after the storm, I might try to convince the higher-ups to organize an exploration party. There’s _so_ much out there, so much more than the trappers let us know about whenever they pass through.” He throws his head back to look up at the ceiling, lips pulled back in a content grin. “It’ll be amazing, doc. It really will.”

“That sounds great,” you hum, probably too low to be heard. The supportive nudge you give him is enough to communicate what was lost over the din of the crowd. He turns to look at you directly, bumping you back with his shoulder.

“Wanna help me try and get a foot in the door of the boss’s office? We’ll need a medic, you know.”

You screw your face up, shaking your head. “Not my thing.”

“Thought I might as well try,” he shrugs, then motions for another drink from the bartender.

The two of you keep talking as the last few rounds play out. He gives you the specifics of the mission he wants to pitch to the overseer, you tell him what sounds convincing and what doesn’t. The bell for the last round rings, but you’re too engrossed in the conversation to fully process it.

Niccha is listing names of those he’d want to bring with him when the crowd begins to disperse. You slide off your seat as you listen, beginning to gather your things as you nod in agreement. He’s got a good head on his shoulders,

“Want me to walk you to your speeder?” Niccha interrupts himself to ask you.

“Please,” you give an exasperated puff of air, glancing at where Roserei and a few of his friends hover near the door. “If I have one more interaction with Roserei today I think I might just combust.”

Niccha laughs, it’s a big sound to come from such an unassuming body. You turn your head over your shoulder to look back at him, shooting your friend a playful smile.

It’s not that you’re actually annoyed by Roserei’s advances—you know he has the best of intentions and at this point only continues to flirt with you as a kind of familiar banter, but there were some days where it got a bit much. Maybe it was more of the fact that you’d be spending yet another storm alone—it tended to get under your skin just a bit more the longer you’ve been on Valeria.

“Alright, I’m ready when you are,” you shoulder your bag, turning to head towards the entrance.

You’re still in the process of winding your scarf around the lower half of your face as the two of you walk outside. The conversation has resumed back to helping him with his plan—you were genuinely excited for him, though the thought of him leaving for however many weeks it would take was enough to put a bit of a drag in your step.

Niccha checks his watch once the two of you are a decent ways away from the tavern. “Shit. Didn’t realize how late it was.”

“What?” You leans forward a bit eye the reading on his device. _22:46_. The temperatures were about to drop. “Fuck.”

“You’ll make it in time,” he assures. “You still have some leeway. The timetables are just extra cautious.”

You’d prefer caution to accidentally freezing to death. You begin to walk a little quicker, Niccha matches your pace. You’d been so worried about making it in time that you don’t hear the footsteps behind you, the heavy crunch of snow nearly lost over the sound of the wind.

The speeder is in sight when you hear a sing-song voice from at least a few yards behind you.

“Beauty,” Roserei’s Outer Rim twang is an all too familiar sound, though slightly slurred. “Thought you’d at least say goodbye before leaving.”

You sigh, opening the back panel of your speeder to unceremoniously drop your bag beside your crates of supplies. It lands with a _thud_ as you do, slightly surprising as you didn’t think your medkit was _that_ heavy. Niccha turns to address the drunk man for you, tone as exasperated as you felt.

“Stars, Ross,” he chides. “Leave her alone, the temp—” Niccha goes quiet in a way you aren’t expecting, hand shooting out to grab your wrist. You turn quickly when he does, heart pounding.

The first thing you see is Roserei, on the ground, face pressed into the hard-packed snow. He lets out a delayed groan once your eyes meet his, somehow being taken down so unexpectedly and quietly that neither of you heard him.

There’s a booted foot on his back. A booted foot connected to an all too familiar greave, the bandolier wrapped around it is still heavy with ammunition. Just as you had remembered.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing?” You don’t even process the words before they’re leaving your mouth.

Din’s helm straightens to look evenly at you. It’s an slow, fluid movement. Calm and cool. Because of course it is. Of course _he_ is.

“He was stalking you,” the vocoder’s crackle nearly knocks the breath out of you. “You told him to leave you alone.”

Roserei lets out another muffled groan. Your gloved hands are balled into tight fists at your sides as you take a step forward. Niccha’s hand shoots out to wrap tightly around your elbow, halting you in your tracks.

“That’s my _friend_ , Mando,” you grit out. “Let him go.”

“H-hey now,” Niccha finally finds his voice. It wavers in fear, you don’t have to look over at him to know his eyes are glued to Din’s suit of armor. The obvious reputation he carries with it. “Doc, maybe you should calm—”

“Mando.” It’s an order, your anger makes you brave.

There’s a constant buzz of _how dare he—how_ dare _he_ that vibrates through your head. It makes it impossible to consider much else. You never directly told him not to find you, but—okay well, it feels childish but it was wholly unfair for him to pop back up after this long. For him to come back once your guard was finally down, when you had no time to brace yourself, to put those walls up again. Unfair. Completely unfair.

He removes his boot from Roserei’s back. The drunk man struggles to his knees, swaying slightly. There’s a scowl on his face that matches the venom in his words.

“She hasn’t done any business warrantin’ the likes of you, _bucket h_ —”

“Roserei,” you shut him up before he can get himself into anymore trouble. “Not necessary.”

“Mandalorian,” Niccha says, stepping in front of you to partially guard your body with his own. “I’m sure there’s been some kind of misunderstanding—this here is our medic and I’m _positive_ she hasn’t been involved in any kind of dealings that…” His voice cracks and you hear him audibly swallow. He starts over. “I--I’m an officer of the Republic and I’m sure I can work with my superiors to get her name cleared of any kind of bounty that might—”

“They traced you back to the Cavill kidnapping.” Din angles his helm in a way that makes it clear that he’s addressing you and you only. “I’m paying off your bounty, working it out with the guild, I promise I just… I needed to make sure you were alright.”

“The Cavill _kidnapping_?” You spit after a beat of silence. It takes you a second more to process the rest of his sentence. “ _My bounty?_ ”

“Hey, doc,” Niccha’s hand on your shoulder should have been reassuring. It isn’t. “Maybe—”

“Stay out of this,” you and Din bark at once. It makes you even angrier. Something about how the two of you were still so deeply inside each other’s heads, even now.

You swallow, eye contact with that T-visor unbroken. “He’s an old friend.”

There’s only the sound of the wind for what feels like a long time.

“Doc,” Niccha is the one to interrupt the silence first. “I don’t mean to uh… add unnecessary pressure but—the temperature is about to—”

“ _Fuck_ ,” you mutter, turning to look at your friend directly. “What time is it?”

“22:51.”

“Fuck.” You bite the inside of your cheek in thought. “Are the head offices still open? Maybe we could—"

“They closed an hour ago, nearly everyone is already in their bunkers,” Niccha’s tone is urgent in a way you aren’t used to. “Doc, you’ve gotta go.”

“What do we do with him?” You ask, refusing to look at Din now that you were able to pull your gaze away from him.

“I’ll deal with Roserei. The Mandalorian goes with you,” Niccha paces over to where the miner is still on his knees in the street, swaying slightly with the drink in his stomach, still looking dejected from when you snapped at him. “You’ve got just enough time to make it if you leave right now. You have to, doc.”

You open your mouth to try and come up with some kind of retort, some kind of plan, but it takes you just a few more seconds of thinking to realize he’s right. There’s no way Din can seek shelter in a Republic bunker until the storm passes. For some pretty obvious reasons.

Niccha is able to sling one of Roserei’s arms across his shoulders and, miraculously, help the miner to his feet. With a deep breath, you seal yourself, giving a curt nod in an unceremonious goodbye as they turn and begin to waddle down the street and towards the bunker.

You turn to face your speeder, making sure everything is in place in the storage compartment. Din’s gaze bores holes into your back.

“Where’s the kid,” you grit out as you slam the back panel of you speeder shut. You have your back turned to Din so there’s no way for you to read the silence that follows your question. You turn, arms crossed over your chest. “Well?”

“Returned to his people.”

Your heart drops to your stomach. You’re left staring at him, eyes wide. After another moment,

“We should,” Din clears his throat. “We should go. Your friend—”

“Yeah,” it feels like you’ve been kicked in the gut. You blink, certain that the tears in your eyes are in response to the whipping wind and nothing more. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Din nods and takes a cautious step forward. You turn back to your speeder and slip into the front seat. Din mirrors you, having to hunch forward in order to fit in the cramped space. The doors seal with a hiss.

Your hands operate on autopilot as you power up the vehicle and navigate towards the gates. Din has to get out to open them for you, the guard posts abandoned. The wind starts to really pick up as he climbs back into the passenger seat.

Fiddling with the navigation, you direct the speeder onto the proper road before taking a preparatory breath for your next question.

“The kid—”

“Grogu,” Din corrects you. Then, tenderly, “His name is Grogu.”

All the air in your lungs leaves you in a breath.

The snow begins to slap against the windshields enclosing the cabin as soon as the town walls disappear from view. It’s pitch black, your headlights against the icy ground are the only sources of illumination, save for the occasional gig-lamp that marks your course. You give a hard swallow, trying to regain control of your voice before speaking again.

“Is he, uh,” you clear your throat with a sniff, pulling your scarf away from your face and off of your neck. From your periphery, you can see Din shift his head to look directly at you. The distinct, reserved air about him has a different texture, almost weather-worn. Something has shifted, you can feel it. “Is he safe, there? Happy?”

“Yes, I think so,” Din’s voice is gentle despite the modulation that usually renders it harsh. There’s no growl to it anymore, no bite. “If not now, he will be.”

“Good.” It’s all you could possibly think to say. You don’t realize you’ve been chewing on the inside of your cheek until a faint metallic taste floods your mouth. You run your tongue over the offending sore until it fades. “That’s good.”

Din nods, then slowly turns his head to face forward again.

“I’m sorry about this. All of it,” he gives a frustrated sigh. “Please know that I didn’t want it to go this way.”

You know he’s talking about Cavill. Deep down, you wish he wasn’t.

_You’re the one who left_ , you have to remind yourself. _He doesn’t owe you anything._ It softens something in you, keeps your anger in check.

“They’re like bloodhounds, his men,” Din continues, shaking his head. You glance over at him as he does, it feels safer now that you know his eyes aren’t on you anymore. “The Guild is doing its best to clean this all up but they’re trailing you until then—they want to hold you as ransom, until Tyreus is freed from the prison Karga sent him to, which would feasible never happen so...” Whatever the end of that sentence was supposed to be, he leaves it hanging in the air. His next words are gritty with frustration, “I never would have taken the job if I had any idea something like this could happen.”

Your stomach drops as you begin to actually process what he’s saying—between the shock of Din showing up and the news about the kid, you didn’t have time to fully think your current situation through. “What about Febhana?”

“She’s in the clear,” he states. “I promised you should would be.” After a prolonged beat, “I uh… had to go to her to find you. Stayed a while to make sure they didn’t have eyes on her.”

“How is she?” You ask quietly. The last time you spoke with her must have been weeks at this point—the winter darkness made it difficult to keep track of the passage of time. A pang of guilt shoots through you.

“She’s well. They both are.” His chest rises then falls in a deep breath. “And very vocal about how badly I fucked up.”

A small smile pulls the corner of your lips upwards. You turn to face the road again, steering the speeder around a winding curve. The two of you were making good time—cutting it close, but you’ll make it. That’s all that matters.

“Where is uh…” Din clears his throat. “Where do you live if you’re not in town with the rest of them?”

You slide your eyes towards him, eyebrow cocked. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re trying to make small talk right now.”

A huff of a laugh breaks through the vocoder with a crackle. Your smile quickly turns into a grin. There was certainly something to be said about the ease at which you were able to slip into normal interaction again, that warm familiarity you associated with him returning nearly without hesitation. It’s almost as if no time had passed at all.

_That’s what friends do_ , a small voice at the back of your head chides. _You agreed to be friends, didn’t you?_

“It’s an old trapper’s den,” you tell him. “There was a botanist who lived there before me, was doing some research for the Empire before he got plucked off by the wolves. I lived in town for a while at the beginning of the year but—I don’t know, I guess I just appreciate the solitude for now. Coming and going on my own terms, you know.”

He gives a low hum of acknowledgement but doesn’t speak for a while. When he does, his tone is notably cautious.

“I didn’t know if I would be able to find you before speaking with Febhana. You talked so much about how happy it made you to travel, I thought you’d bounce around a lot more.”

“I did, for a little. Then I realized how… how lonely it could be, moving around that much.” You give a rueful huff of air that might have been a laugh if there wasn’t so much weight behind it. “I get attached too easily I think. I never know how to say goodbye.”

You wince slightly, not thinking through that last bit before it left your mouth.

“I gathered.” There isn’t any malice behind his words, not even in a residual sense. You flinch regardless. The rest of the drive is in silence.

**

You pull the speeder into the small loading bay adjacent to the your home.

The loading bay tunnel is illuminated by the same orange-tinged lamps that line the town’s streets. You wait for the doors to seal shut behind you before opening the doors of the speeder. The fog of your breath billows in the air as soon as the seal is released, the cold air invading the warm cabin is nearly a physical blow it’s so shocking.

Grumbling something under your breath about your poor decision making skills in choosing a planet to settle down on, you hop out of the speeder and rush to the back compartment. Din is already there, both crates in hand with ease.

“Thank you,” you manage after glancing him over. _Maker_ you’d almost forgotten how _big_ he is. Averting your gaze, you sling your bag over your shoulder and lead him to the entrance a few paces further into the tunnel.

Typing in your code, the heavy metal door slides open. Stepping inside, you flick on the lights, illuminating your home in all its cement, bunker-like glory.

The former hunter’s den was built directly into the mountain’s face, vestigial remnants of the Old Republic’s attempts to extend its reaches ever forward.

The mountain-side wall is all rough stone, so your bed is pushed against one of the constructed alcoves. Everything here was left over from the botanist—the moth-eaten carpet, shelves now populated with your books, yellowed diagrams of native lichens still tacked to the wall, all his. You kind of liked the clutter, slightly musty but inviting all the same.

At least you have the small luxury of a set of observation windows along the opposite wall, overlooking the modest clearing in front of the den that abruptly gives way to a wall of black pines.

Before winter settled over the landscape, your stained-glass hanging shone brilliantly through the light that poured through them. With the storm outside and none of your flood lights activated, the windows are just a wall of angry darkness.

“You can just put those over there,” you motion to the table pressed against the observation wall with a jerk of your head.

You make a beeline to your space heater. The room is still cold enough that you can see your breath, maybe just not with the same drama as you could in the loading bay. You turn the small machine on, taking a second to warm your hands as it rumbles to life. You stand with a sniff, dropping your bag at the base of your bed.

Turning to face Din again, your eyebrows knit together when you are able to see him in direct light like this. It’s only then that you realize he’s practically soaked through, his footsteps leaving little puddles in his wake. Ice is caked to the fabric of his pantlegs, crusted over the ridges of his beskar. He must be freezing.

He’s standing in front of the table, turning over a small device in his hands, examining it from every angle. With a jolt, you realize it’s the radio he had given you. You forgot that you’d left it there when you were preparing for your ride into town that morning.

Din looks up at you in time with your realization. He just looks, nothing else. That same stony silence, what you used to be so accustomed to, now felt like it was ripping holes into your stomach. It enlivens that initial outburst of anger, it’s the only way you can feel brave.

You ask the question before you can talk yourself down.

“Why are you here, Din?” It sounds more like an accusation than you intended, but so be it. You protectively cross your arms over your chest, mustering the courage to really look at him for the first time since you left town.

“I told you,” he puts the device back down as he says it. “C—”

“That’s not it, that’s not all of it,” you narrow your eyes, mind working over the situation as he presented it to you. “It’s been a year. You could have easily dealt with them by now, or hired someone from the Guild to check in on me.”

“I had… other matters to attended to,” a familiar, dismissive gruffness returns to his voice, one you haven’t heard in a long time. It’s relieving almost—this was the familiar Mando, the one you could work with. He thinks about his next words before he voices them. “I needed to make sure you were safe.” 

“You keep saying that, like it explains absolutely _anything_ at all,” you press your lips together, rubbing a hand over your brow. The warble in your voice makes you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum. “I’m sorry I’m just… a little shaken up. You showing up here without any warning and—”

“I wouldn’t trust anyone else to protect you,” Din says. There’s a pained tone to it, as if the words were physically taxing to voice but he had to push through anyway. “I need to do it myself. I owe you that much.”

What could you possibly say? _I’d rather get fucking kidnapped by a bunch of lunatics than deal with the shock of you showing up?_ Both not true—kind of—and absolutely insane. But that doesn’t stop the anxious feeling rolling through your gut, the shaking in your hands returning tenfold.

“Why did you leave,” it doesn’t sound like a question when he asks it. It’s too rough of a sound, unfinished and heavy. You had your chance to ask, now it’s only fair that he gets to as well. _It’s only fair_ , you repeat to yourself. _You were the one who left_.

It takes you a second to answer. You’re determined to get it right, even if it hurts.

“There was a while where I… I thought if I could just be strong enough for you,” you’re clearing your throat and it’s painfully obvious it’s to keep yourself from crying. Your words are staggered because of it. “If I… if, somehow, I was able to love you enough. Hard enough. Things would change.” You swallow. “It didn’t take me very long to realize how stupid that was. That that wasn’t fair for either of us.”

He’s quiet. When he does speak, his voice is a low rasp.

“You’re strong,” your name is the softest sound you’ve ever heard from his lips. “One of the strongest I know.”

“I don’t want to be.” It’s your immediate reply. It’s your immediate truth. You’re voice warbles in a way you can’t control. You look down at your hands, clasped against your stomach in some bare semblance of self-comfort. “I don’t.”

When you look back up at him, wary, the man in front of you is taking a step forward. He begins to say something, but it’s said so quietly it’s rendered intelligible by the modulator. More like a hiss of ozone than any distinguishable phrase.

You’re able to recognize the sigh that follows, at least. He doesn’t attempt to move any closer.

Din places both hands at the edge of his helmet and begins to push upwards. There’s a hissing sound of mechanisms releasing. You’re so baffled you don’t process what he’s doing until you can see the dark stubble of his jaw.

With a gasp, you whip around, turning your back to him. Your chest moves in time with your rapid breathing, hand clutched over your heart in shock. Neither of you say anything, for what feels like too long.

“It’s okay,” Din finally manages. “It’s okay. The oath—my creed. It’s over. When… when he left…”

“It’s too much,” you don’t intend it to come out as a whisper. You clear your throat and start over. “It’s too much, for right now. Please.”

You only turn back around when you’re sure he’s fixed his helm back over his face.

The two of you stand like that for what feels like a long time. Just breathing. After a moment, he extends one gloved hand. Toward you. For you.

The touch begins with just the tips of your fingers barely grazing against the leather covering his own. You slowly slide your hand forward, a fraction of an inch at a time, until your palm is pressed flushed to his. He waits until then to hesitantly cup his fingers around yours.

“Thank you,” you’re eventually able to manage, sealing your other hand around his knuckles. You look directly into his visor, red and puffy eyes be dammed. “For making sure I’m safe. I’m sorry all of this had to get so complicated.”

“It’s alright,” he assures, still staring down at your interlocked hands.

“The botanist left some clothes, if you’d like,” you say after a moment. “It’s going to be a bit of a long night, might as well be comfortable.” It feels like he’s scanning your face for something, but he eventually nods with a quick dip of his head.

You let go of his hand, walking to your bed and crouching beside it in order to pull out the storage container from underneath.

“Where is the fresher?” He asks.

“To your right,” you don’t lift your head as you continue to rummage in order to find something for him. “Leave your stuff wherever.”

He’s only started to remove his armor by the time you straighten with a set of clothes in your hands. His weapons are stacked against the table, the longest of them balanced against its leg.

Din stretches one of his arms back in order to release the clasp on the opposite pauldron. He’s only able to graze the top of his shoulder with his ungloved hand before he, soundlessly, hesitates. You’re still able to recognize one of his stoic winces, despite all the time that’s passed since you’ve last cared for him.

“Are you hurt?” You ask.

“’S fine, just sore,” he grunts. “Had a bit of a run-in with a patrol group before I found town.”

“Lemme help,” it comes out softer than you intended.

He doesn’t move to try and do it himself again, so you hesitantly cross the room once more, tucking the clothes under your arm. Facing the massive expanse of his back, you quickly undo the buckles holding his armor in place. The leather is so worn and cracked from use it’s nearly velveteen against your fingers.

Din takes each piece as you hand them to him, stacking it beside his weapons. You’ve never done this part before, never been the one to undress him. Seen him in just his under-armor plenty of times, but this feels… different. You don’t know how. Just does.

Setting down his chest plate, he turns to face you. Your breath catches in your throat. You look up at him inquisitively, unsure as to what he’s about to do.

Your brow furrows with confusion when he holds out a hand, palm up. Heat explodes over your face as you realize he’s asking for the clothes you still have tucked under your arm. Quickly averting your gaze, you hand the folded pieces of fabric to him and busy yourself with getting ready for the night as he disappears into the fresher.

By the time he returns, you’re already climbing into bed. You laid out a few of the pelts you could spare on the ground beside your bed for him, directly in front of the heater. They’re a variety of sizes and shades, purchased form the trappers that would occasionally pass through town. You save one for your bed, layered over the military-grade blanket you usually used as padding.

Din seems to notice that fact immediately as he crosses the room.

“Just this is fine,” he leans down to returns the largest of the pelts to your bed. You look at him warily.

“Are you sure?”

Din gives a nod as an answer, settling on the floor with a grunt.

“Okay,” you say softly. He has his back turned towards you, hands outstretched in front of the heater. You hesitate for a moment, as if you’re about to say something. You don’t know what that would be, so you turn over in your bed, tugging one of the pelts up and around your shoulders.

“Can I remove my helm?” He asks after a moment.

“Yeah, yeah of course,” you speak to the wall, eyes already closed.

There’s the sound of hissing, then the rustle of him adjusting himself against the ground. If you try hard enough, you can hear the quiet sound of his breathing. It’s calming in a way you don’t expect. Exhausted, you fall asleep almost instantly.

**

You wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of the wind howling, loud and angry, from outside. You’re about to close your eyes again when you hear the chattering of Din’s teeth.

You sit up, futilely blinking against the darkness. The second the pelt you’d wrapped yourself in falls, your hit with air cold enough to immediately shoot through the thick sweater you’re wearing.

At the sound of your movement, the chattering abruptly stops. It takes you a second to figure out why. Your heart sinks at the thought that he’d try to even hide a bodily reaction like that for your own comfort.

Your eyebrows knitted together, you peel back the pelts, leaning over to prod his shoulder.

“Come up here,” your voice cracks with sleepy disuse. “It’s freezing.”

He hesitates for a moment, then pushes himself to his feet. The mattress dips with his weight. You do your best to tamp down the thrill of excitement that shoots through you in spite of your best intentions to keep this—what, exactly? Cordial? You had no idea anymore. 

Din is so cold he actually vibrates a little, the chattering returning as if he couldn’t conceal it any longer.

The room remains entirely in shadow, the windows darkened by the storm clouds. The space heater omits an occasional pop. You rearrange the pelts to accommodate his body, pulling the largest around both of your shoulders. You’re about to settle back down, about to turn over and try to fall asleep again, when—

Din touches your cheek.

It’s so sudden, and his hands are so cold, that you automatically flinch. He immediately snatches his hand away.

“I’m sorry, I… I don’t know what I was thinking.” His voice is as rough as yours had been.

“No,” you don’t think before you seal your hand over his in reassurance, skin against skin. It makes the breath catch in your throat. “No, it’s alright. You startled me, that’s all.” You try to use your hand to warm his, cupping your palm around the tips of his fingers. “I didn’t realize how cold it was going to get, you should have woken me.”

Din audibly swallows.

“I just want to hold you.” You’ve never heard so much pained restraint in his voice. “We don’t have to do anything else. Whatever you need I’ll do, just please let me hold you. It’s all I want.”

His entire body stiffens as you wrap your hand around his wrist, lifting it and placing the entire length of his palm flush against your cheek. He touches you, touches your face, for what feels like the very first time. In a way, it is.

Blinking against the inky darkness, your eyes start to adjust. The low glow of the space heater is only able to illuminate the faint outline of his form, swooping curls of his hair, the barest hint of the line of his jaw. The heavy stubble you now know is there.

When you remove your hand from where it rests over his, he stays utterly still as your shift in order to rest your head against the bicep of his bent arm, tucking your face into the crook of his neck. It’s the unworded permission he was waiting for. Din immediately curls his body around yours, desperately pressing you against him.

Sleep comes easily. You dream that you are perched on a hillside, facing two, ragged mountains that seem to harbor the sky itself within the space between them. Not a single cloud marks the horizon. You know it’s about to rain regardless.


End file.
